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WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

IN  SOUTH  AFRICA 


President  Steyn  on  his  \v:iv  to  Sand  River  Battle. 


WITH  BOTH  ARMIES 

IN    SOUTH    AFRICA 


BY 


RICHARD    HARDING   DAVIS,    F.R.G.S. 

AUTHOR    OF    "THE   CUBAN   AND    PORTO    RICAN   CAMPAIGNS,"    "CUBA    IN 

WAR   TIME,"    "SOLDIERS   OF   FORTUNE,"    "  GALLEGHER 

AND   OTHER    STORIES,"    ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1900 


X)"i 


3^ 


Copyright,  igoo,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


TROW   DIRECTORY 

PRINTING  AND   BOOKBINDING   COMPANY 

NEW   YORK 


TO 

CECIL   CLARK   DAVIS 


M185140 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

With  Buller's  Column i 


CHAPTER   H 
The  Siege  of  Ladysmith 26 

CHAPTER   HI 
The  Relief  of  Ladysmith 48 

CHAPTER   IV 
My  First  Sight  of  the  Boer 86 

CHAPTER  V 
Pretoria  in  War-time 107 

CHAPTER   VI 
President  Kruger 140 

vii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   VII 

PAGE 

The  English  Prisoners 157 


CHAPTER  VIII 
The  Night  Before  the  Battle        .        .        .        .171 

CHAPTER   IX 
The  Battle  of  Sand  River 186 

CHAPTER  X 
The  Last  Days  of  Pretoria 208 


VIU 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


President  Steyn  on  his  Way  to  Sand  River  Battle 

Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Pontoon  Bridge  Across  the  Tugela        ....      6 

An  Army  in  Being H 

Ladysmith 26 

"Tommies"    Seeking   Shelter   from    "Long   Tom"    at 
Ladysmith 32 

The  Earl  of  Ava         .        . 36 

George  W.  Steevens    . 38 

Horses   Being  Conveyed  into   Town  to  be  Made  into 
Soup 42 

The  Balloon  at  Ladysmith 50 

Gordon    Highlanders  Waiting   at   Bridge   to   Receive 
General  Buller 66 

Shattered    Tower    of    the    Court     House    at    Lady- 
smith         74 

Three  Generations  of  Boers  Now  Fighting  .         .        -     94 

President  Kruger's  Cottage 108 

ix 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 


Public   Square   in    Pretoria  before  the  British  Occu- 
pation        112 

The  Executive  Council ii6 

A  Boer  Commando 128 

The  President's  State-carriage 140 

President     Kruger     Reviewing    the     Irish-American 
Brigade 142 

The  President  on  His  Veranda 146 

"Jimmy"  Smith,  who  Presented  the  Message  of  Sym- 
pathy TO  President  Kruger 150 

British  Prisoners 158 

The  Bathing-tanks  for  the  Privates  at  Waterval      .  168 

President  Steyn 188 

The  Boer  Artillery 192 

Boer  Ambulance 196 

Boer    Horses    During   Action    Under    Crest   of    Hill 
Occupied  by  Burghers  .......  200 

General  Botha      204 

Lord  Roberts  and   Staff   Entering  the   Outer    Lines 
AT  Pretoria 210 

The  First  British  Troops  to  Enter  Pretoria  214 

English     Officers    Arriving    at    the    Model    School 
House       .        .        .         .        , 218 

The  English  Tommies  at  Waterval 222 

The  United  States  Consul  to  Pretoria  ....  224 

X 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

Boer  Retreat  from  Pretoria 228 

Pretoria  Square  Occupied  by  the  British      .        .        ,  232 

Colonials    "Marching   Past"   at  the  Formal  Occupa- 
tion OF  Pretoria 236 


XI 


WITH    BOTH    ARMIES 


CHAPTER   I 


w 


WITH    BULLERS    COLUMN 

ERE  you  the  station-master  here  be- 
fore this  ? "  I  asked  the  man  in  the 
straw  hat,  at  Colenso.  ''  I  mean  before  this 
war  ?  " 

"  What !  I  ?  No  fear  !  "  snorted  the  station- 
master,  scornfully.  "  Why,  we  didn't  know 
Colenso  was  on  the  line  until  Buller  came 
and  fought  a  battle  here  —  that's  how  it  is 
with  all  these  way-stations  now.  Everybody's 
talking  about  them.  We  never  took  no  notice 
to  them." 

And  yet  the  arriving  stranger  might  have 
been  forgiven  his  point  of  view  and  his  start 
of  surprise  when  he  found  Chieveley  a  place 
of  only  a  half  dozen  corrugated  zinc  huts,  and 
Colenso  a  scattered  gathering  of  a  dozen  shat- 
tered houses  of  battered  brick. 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

Chieveley  seemed  so  insignificant  in  contrast 
with  its  fame  to  those  who  had  followed  the 
war  on  maps  and  in  the  newspapers,  that  one 
was  not  sure  he  was  on  the  right  road  until 
he  saw  from  the  car-window  the  armored  train 
still  lying  on  the  embankment,  the  graves  be- 
side it,  and  the  donga  into  which  Winston 
Churchill  pulled  and  carried  the  wounded. 

And  as  the  train  bumped  and  halted  before 
the  blue  and  white  enamel  sign  that  marks 
Colenso  station,  the  places  which  have  made 
that  spot  familiar  and  momentous  fell  into 
line  like  the  buoys  which  mark  the  entrance 
to  a  harbor. 

We  knew  that  the  high  bare  ridge  to  the 
right  must  be  Fort  Wylie,  that  the  plain  on  the 
left  was  where  Colonel  Long  had  lost  his  artil- 
lery, and  three  officers  gained  the  Victoria 
Cross,  and  that  the  swift,  muddy  stream,  in 
which  the  iron  railroad  bridge  lay  humped  and 
sprawling,  was  the  Tugela  River. 

Six  hours  before,  at  Frere  Station,  the  sta- 
tion-master had  awakened  us  to  say  that  Lady- 
smith  would  be  relieved  at  any  moment.  This 
had  but  just  come  over  the  wire.  It  was  "offi- 
cial."    Indeed,  he  added,  with  local  pride,  that 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

the  village  band  was  still  awake  and  in  readi- 
ness to  celebrate  the  imminent  event.  He 
found,  I  fear,  an  unsympathetic  audience.  The 
train  was  carrying  philanthropic  gentlemen  in 
charge  of  stores  of  champagne  and  marmalade 
for  the  besieged  city.  They  did  not  want  it  to 
be  relieved  until  they  were  there  to  substitute 
pdtd  de  foie  gras  for  horseflesh.  And  there 
were  officers,  too,  who  wanted  a  "look  in,"  and 
who  had  been  kept  waiting  at  Cape  Town  for 
commissions,  gladdening  the  guests  of  the 
Mount  Nelson  Hotel  the  while,  with  their 
new  khaki  and  gaiters,  and  there  were  Tom- 
mies who  wanted  '*  Relief  of  Ladysmith  "  on 
the  clasp  of  their  medal,  as  they  had  seen  "  Re- 
lief of  Lucknow  "  on  the  medal  of  the  Chelsea 
pensioners.  And  there  was  a  correspondent 
who  had  journeyed  15,000  miles  to  see  Lady- 
smith  relieved,  and  who  was  apparently  going 
to  miss  that  sight,  after  five  weeks  of  travel,  by 
a  margin  of  five  hours. 

We  all  growled  **  That's  good,"  as  we  had 
done  for  the  last  two  weeks  every  time  w^e  had 
heard  it  was  relieved,  but  our  tone  was  not  en- 
thusiastic. And  when  the  captain  of  the  Natal 
Carbineers  said,  "  I  am  afraid  the  good  news  is 

3 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

too  premature,"  we  all  said,  hopefully,  we  were 
afraid  it  was. 

We  had  seen  nothing  yet  that  was  like  real 
war.  That  night  at  Pietermaritzburg  the  offi- 
cers at  the  hotel  were  in  mess-jackets,  the  offi- 
cers' wives  in  dinner-gowns.  It  was  like  Shep- 
heard's  Hotel,  at  the  top  of  the  season.  But 
only  six  hours  after  that  dinner,  as  we  looked 
out  of  the  car-windows,  we  saw  galloping  across 
the  high  grass,  like  men  who  had  lost  their  way, 
and  silhouetted  black  against  the  red  sunrise, 
countless  horsemen  scouting  ahead  of  our  train, 
and  guarding  it  against  the  fate  of  the  armored 
one  lying  wrecked  at  Chieveley.  The  darkness 
was  still  heavy  on  the  land  and  the  only  lights 
were  the  red  eyes  of  the  armored  train  creep- 
ing in  advance  of  ours,  and  the  red  sun,  which 
showed  our  silent  escort  appearing  suddenly 
against  the  skyline  on  a  ridge,  or  galloping 
toward  us  through  the  dew  to  order  us,  with  a 
wave  of  the  hand,  to  greater  speed.  One  hour 
after  sunrise  the  train  drew  up  at  Colenso,  and 
from  only  a  mile  away  we  heard  the  heavy  thud 
of  the  naval  guns,  the  hammering  of  the  Boer 
"  pom-poms,"  and  the  Maxims  and  Colt  auto- 
matics spanking  the  air.     We  smiled  at  each 

4 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

other  guiltily.  We  were  on  time.  It  was  most 
evident  that  Ladysmith  had  not  been  relieved.. 

This  was  the  twelfth  day  of  a  battle  that  Bui- 
ler's  column  was  waging  against  the  Boers  and 
their  mountain  ranges,  or  "disarranges,"  as 
someone  described  them,  without  having  gained 
more  than  three  miles  of  hostile  territory.  He 
had  tried  to  force  his  way  through  them  six 
times,  and  had  been  repulsed  six  times.  And 
now  he  was  to  try  it  again. 

No  map,  nor  photograph,  nor  written  de- 
scription can  give  an  idea  of  the  country  which 
lay  between  Buller  and  his  goal.  It  was  an 
eruption  of  high  hills,  linked  together  at  every 
point  without  order  or  sequence.  In  most 
countries  mountains  and  hills  follow  some  nat- 
ural law.  The  Cordilleras  can  be  traced  from 
the  Amazon  River  to  Guatemala  City  ;  they 
make  the  water-shed  of  two  continents  ;  the 
Great  Divide  forms  the  backbone  of  the  States, 
but  these  Natal  hills  have  no  lineal  descent. 
They  are  illegitimate  children  of  no  line,  aban- 
doned broadcast  over  the  country,  with  no 
family  likeness  and  no  home.  They  stand 
alone,  or  shoulder  to  shoulder,  or  at  right 
angles,  or  at  a  tangent,  or  join  hands  across  a 

5 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

valley.  They  never  appear  the  same  ;  some 
run  to  a  sharp  point,  some  stretch  out,  forming 
a  table-land,  others  are  gigantic  ant-hills,  others 
perfect  and  accurately  modelled  ramparts.  In 
a  ride  of  half  a  mile,  every  hill  completely  loses 
its  original  aspect  and  character. 

They  hide  each  other,  or  disguise  each 
other.  Each  can  be  enfiladed  by  the  other, 
and  not  one  gives  up  the  secret  of  its  strategic 
value  until  its  crest  has  been  carried  by  the 
bayonet.  To  add  to  this  confusion,  the  river 
Tugela  has  selected  the  hills  around  Ladysmith 
as  occupying  the  country  through  which  it  will 
endeavor  to  throw  off  its  pursuers.  It  darts 
through  them  as  though  striving  to  escape,  it 
doubles  on  its  tracks,  it  sinks  out  of  sight  be- 
tween them,  and  in  the  open  plain  rises  to  the 
dignity  of  water-falls.  It  runs  up  hill,  and  re- 
mains motionless  on  an  incline,  and  on  the 
level  ground  twists  and  turns  so  frequently 
that  when  one  says  he  has  crossed  the  Tugela, 
he  means  he  has  crossed  it  once  at  a  drift, 
once  at  the  wrecked  railroad  bridge,  and  once 
over  a  pontoon.  And  then  he  is  not  sure  that 
he  is  not  still  on  the  same  side  from  which  he 
started. 

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1 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

Some  of  these  hills  are  green,  but  the  great- 
er part  are  a  yellow  or  dark  red,  against  which 
at  two  hundred  yards  a  man  in  khaki  is  indis- 
tinguishable from  the  rocks  around  him.  In- 
deed, the  khaki  is  the  English  soldier's  sole 
protection.  It  saves  him  in  spite  of  himself, 
for  he  apparently  cannot  learn  to  advance  un- 
der cover,  and  a  skyline  is  the  one  place  where 
he  selects  to  stand  erect  and  stretch  his  weary 
limbs.  I  have  come  to  within  a  hundred  yards 
of  a  hill  before  I  saw  that,  scattered  among  its 
red  and  yellow  bowlders  was  the  better  part  of 
a  regiment,  as  closely  packed  together  as  the 
crowd  on  the  bleaching  boards  at  a  baseball 
match. 

Into  this  maze  and  confusion  of  nature's 
fortifications  Buller's  column  has  been  twist- 
ing and  turning,  marching  and  countermarch- 
ing, capturing  one  position  after  another,  to 
find  it  was  enfiladed  from  many  hills,  and 
abandoning  it,  only  to  retake  it  a  week  later. 
The  greater  part  of  the  column  has  abandoned 
its  tents  and  is  bivouacking  in  the  open.  It  is 
a  wonderful  and  impressive  sight.  At  the  first 
view,  an  army  in  being,  when  it  is  spread  out 
as  it  is  in  the  Tugela  basin  back  of  the  hills, 

7 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

seems  a  hopelessly  and  irrevocably  entangled 
mob. 

An  army  in  the  field  is  not  regiments  of 
armed  men,  marching  with  a  gun  on  shoulder, 
or  crouching  behind  trenches.  That  is  the 
least,  even  if  it  seems  the  most,  important  part 
of  it.  Before  one  reaches  the  firing-line  he 
must  pass  villages  of  men,  camps  of  men,  biv- 
ouacs of  men,  who  are  feeding,  mending,  re- 
pairing, and  burying  the  men  at  the  "front." 
It  is  these  latter  that  make  the  mob  of  gypsies, 
which  is  apparently  without  head  or  order  or 
organization.  They  stretched  across  the  great 
basin  of  the  Tugela,  like  the  children  of  Israel, 
their  camp-fires  rising  to  the  sky  at  night  like 
the  reflection  of  great  search-lights  ;  by  day 
they  swarmed  across  the  plain,  like  hundreds 
of  moving  circus-vans  in  every  direction,  with 
as  little  obvious  intention  as  herds  of  buffalo. 
But  each  had  his  appointed  work,  and  each 
was  utterly  indifferent  to  the  battle  going  for- 
ward a  mile  away.  Hundreds  of  teams,  of 
sixteen  oxen  each,  crawled  like  great  black 
water-snakes  across  the  drifts,  the  Kaffir  driv- 
ers, naked  and  black,  lashing  them  with  whips 
as  long  as    lariats,  shrieking,  beseeching,  and 

8 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

howling,  and  falling  upon  the  oxen's  horns  to 
drag  them  into  place. 

Mules  from  Spain  and  Texas,  loaded  with 
ammunition,  kicked  and  plunged,  more  oxen 
drew  more  soberly  the  great  naval  guns,  which 
lurched  as  though  in  a  heavy  sea,  throwing 
the  blue  -  jackets  who  hung  upon  the  drag- 
ropes  from  one  high  side  of  the  trail  to  the 
other.  Across  the  plain,  and  making  toward 
the  trail,  wagons  loaded  with  fodder,  with  ra- 
tions, with  camp  equipment,  with  tents  and 
cooking-stoves,  crowded  each  other  as  closely 
as  cable-cars  on  Broadway.  Scattered  among 
them  were  fixed  lines  of  tethered  horses,  rows 
of  dog-tents,  camps  of  Kaffirs,  hospital  sta- 
tions with  the  Red  Cross  waving  from  the 
nearest  and  highest  tree.  Dripping  water- 
carts  with  as  many  spigots  as  the  regiment 
had  companies,  howitzer  guns  guided  by  as 
many  ropes  as  a  May-pole,  crowded  past  these 
to  the  trail,  or  gave  way  to  the  ambulances 
filled  with  men  half  dressed  and  bound  in  the 
zinc-blue  bandages  that  made  the  color  detest- 
able forever  after.  Troops  of  the  irregular 
horse  gallop  through  this  multitude,  with  a 
jangling  of  spurs  and  sling-belts  ;   and  Tom- 

9 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

mies,  in  close  order,  fight  their  way  among 
the  oxen,  or  help  pull  them  to  one  side  as  the 
stretchers  pass,  each  with  its  burden,  each  with 
its  blue  bandage  stained  a  dark  brownish  crim- 
son. It  is  only  when  the  figure  on  the  stretch- 
er lies  under  a  blanket  that  the  tumult  and 
push  and  sweltering  mass  comes  to  a  quick 
pause,  while  the  dead  man's  comrade  stands  at 
attention,  and  the  officer  raises  his  fingers  to 
his  helmet.  Then  the  mass  surges  on  again, 
with  cracking  of  whips  and  shouts  and  impre- 
cations, while  the  yellow  dust  rises  in  thick 
clouds  and  buries  the  picture  in  a  glaring  fog. 
This  moving,  struggling  mass,  that  fights  for 
the  right  of  way  along  the  road,  is  within  easy 
distance  of  the  shells.  Those  from  their  own 
guns  pass  over  them  with  a  shrill  crescendo, 
those  from  the  enemy  burst  among  them  at 
rare  intervals,  or  sink  impotently  in  the  soft 
soil.  And  a  dozen  Tommies  rush  to  dig  them 
out  as  keepsakes.  Up  at  the  front,  brown 
and  yellow  regiments  are  lying  crouched  be- 
hind brown  and  yellow  rocks  and  stones.  As 
far  as  you  can  see,  the  hills  are  sown  with 
them.  With  a  glass  you  can  distinguish  them 
against  the  skyline  of  every  hill,  for  over  three 

10 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

miles  away.  Sometimes  the  men  rise  and  fire, 
and  there  is  a  feverish  flutter  of  musketry ; 
sometimes  they  lie  motionless  for  hours  while 
the  guns  make  the  ways  straight. 

Anyone  who  has  seen  Epsom  Downs  on  a 
Derby  day,  with  its  thousands  of  vans  and  tents 
and  lines  of  horses  and  moving  mobs,  can  form 
some  idea  of  what  it  is  like.  But  while  at  the 
Derby  all  is  interest  and  excitement,  and  every- 
one is  pushing  and  struggling,  and  the  air  pal- 
pitates with  the  intoxication  of  a  great  event, 
the  winning  of  a  horse-race — here,  where  men 
are  killed  every  hour  and  no  one  of  them  knows 
when  his  turn  may  come,  the  fact  that  most 
impresses  you  is  their  indifference  to  it  all. 
What  strikes  you  most  is  the  bored  air  of  the 
Tommies,  the  undivided  interest  of  the  engi- 
neers in  the  construction  of  a  pontoon  bridge, 
the  solicitude  of  the  medical  staff  over  the  long 
lines  of  wounded,  the  rage  of  the  naked  Kaffirs 
at  their  lumbering  steers ;  the  fact  that  every- 
one is  intent  on  something — anything — but 
the  battle. 

They  are  wearied  with  battles.    The  Tommies 

stretch  themselves  in  the  sun  to  dry  the  wet 

khaki  in  which  they  have  lain  out  in  the  cold 

II 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

night  for  weeks,  and  yawn  at  battles.  Or,  if 
you  climb  to  the  hill  where  the  officers  are 
seated,  you  will  find  men  steeped  even  deeper 
in  boredom.  They  are  burned  a  dark  red; 
their  brown  mustaches  look  white  by  contrast ; 
theirs  are  the  same  faces  you  have  met  with  in 
Piccadilly,  which  you  see  across  the  tables  of 
the  Savoy  restaurant,  which  gaze  depressedly 
from  the  windows  of  White's  and  the  Bachelors' 
Club.  If  they  were  bored  then,  they  are  un- 
bearably bored  now.  Below  them  the  men  of 
their  regiment  lie  crouched  amid  the  bowlders, 
hardly  distinguishable  from  the  brown  and 
yellow  rock.  They  are  sleeping,  or  dozing,  or 
yawning.  A  shell  passes  over  them  like  the 
shaking  of  many  telegraph  wires,  and  neither 
officer  nor  Tommy  raises  his  head  to  watch  it 
strike.  They  are  tired  in  body  and  in  mind, 
with  cramped  limbs  and  aching  eyes.  They 
have  had  twelve  nights  and  twelve  days  of 
battle,  and  it  has  lost  its  power  to  amuse. 

When  the  sergeants  call  the  companies 
together,  they  are  eager  enough.  Anything  is 
better  than  lying  still  looking  up  at  the  sunny, 
inscrutable  hills,  or  down  into  the  plam  crawl- 
ing with  black  oxen. 

12 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

Among  the  group  of  staff  officers  someone 
has  lost  a  cigar-holder.  It  has  slipped  from  be- 
tween his  fingers,  and,  with  the  vindictiveness 
of  inanimate  things,  has  slid  and  jumped  under 
a  pile  of  rocks.  The  interest  of  all  around  is 
instantly  centred  on  the  lost  cigar-holder.  The 
Tommies  begin  to  roll  the  rocks  away,  endan- 
gering the  limbs  of  the  men  below  them,  and 
half  the  kopje  is  obliterated.  They  are  as  keen 
as  terriers  after  a  rat.  The  officers  sit  above 
and  give  advice  and  disagree  as  to  where  that 
cigar-holder  hid  itself.  Over  their  heads,  not 
twenty  feet  above,  the  shells  chase  each  other 
fiercely.  But  the  officers  have  become  accus- 
tomed to  shells  ;  a  search  for  a  lost  cigar-holder, 
which  is  going  on  under  their  very  eyes,  is  of 
greater  interest.  And  when  at  last  a  Tommy 
pounces  upon  it  with  a  laugh  of  triumph,  the 
officers  look  their  disappointment,  and,  with  a 
sigh  of  resignation,  pick  up  their  field-glasses. 

It  is  all  a  question  of  familiarity.  On  Broad- 
way, if  a  building  is  going  up  where  there  is  a 
chance  of  a  loose  brick  falling  on  someone's 
head,  the  contractor  puts  up  red  signs  marked 
'*  Danger  !  "  and  you  dodge  over  to  the  other 
side.     But  if  you  had  been  in  battle  for  twelve 

13 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

days,  as  have  the  soldiers  of  Buller's  column, 
passing  shells  would  interest  you  no  more  than 
do  passing  cable-cars.  After  twelve  days  you 
would  forget  that  shells  are  dangerous  even  as 
you  forget  when  crossing  Broadway  that  cable- 
cars  can  kill  and  mangle. 

Up  on  the  highest  hill,  seated  among  the 
highest  rocks,  are  General  Buller  and  his  staff. 
The  hill  is  all  of  rocks,  sharp,  brown  rocks, 
as  clearly  cut  as  foundation-stones.  They  are 
thrown  about  at  irregular  angles,  and  are 
shaded  only  by  stiff  bayonet-like  cacti.  Above 
is  a  blue,  glaring  sky,  into  which  the  top  of  the 
kopje  seems  to  reach,  and  to  draw  and  concen- 
trate upon  itself  all  of  the  sun's  heat.  This 
little  jagged  point  of  blistering  rocks  holds  the 
forces  that  press  the  button  which  sets  the 
struggling  mass  below,  and  the  thousands  of 
men  upon  the  surrounding  hills,  in  motion.  It 
is  the  conning  tower  of  the  relief  column,  only, 
unlike  a  conning  tower,  it  offers  no  protection, 
no  seclusion,  no  peace.  To-day,  commanding 
generals,  under  the  new  conditions  which  this 
war  has  developed,  do  not  charge  up  hills  wav- 
ing flashing  swords.  They  sit  on  rocks,  and 
wink  out  their  orders  by  a  flashing  hand-mir- 

14 


■o 


03 


tf, 
'3 


£/; 


03 


>i      'd 


<       r 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

ror.  The  swords  have  been  left  at  the  base,  or 
coated  deep  with  mud,  so  that  they  shall  not 
flash,  and  with  this  column  everyone,  under  the 
rank  of  general,  carries  a  rifle  on  purpose  to 
disguise  the  fact  that  he  is  entitled  to  carry  a 
sword.  The  kopje  is  the  central  station  of  the 
system.  From  its  uncomfortable  eminence  the 
commanding  general  watches  the  developments 
of  his  attack,  and  directs  it  by  heliograph  and 
ragged  bits  of  bunting.  A  sweating,  dirty  Tom- 
my turns  his  back  on  a  hill  a  mile  away  and 
slaps  the  air  with  his  signal  flag  ;  another  Tom- 
my, with  the  front  visor  of  his  helmet  cocked 
over  the  back  of  his  neck,  watches  an  answer- 
ing bit  of  bunting  through  a  glass.  The  bit  of 
bunting,  a  mile  away,  flashes  impatiently,  once 
to  the  right  and  once  to  the  left,  and  the 
Tommy  with  the  glass  says,  **  They  understand, 
sir,"  and  the  other  Tommy,  who  has  not  as  yet 
cast  even  an  interested  glance  at  the  regiment 
he  has  ordered  into  action,  folds  his  flag  and 
curls  up  against  a  hot  rock  and  instantly  sleeps. 
Stuck  on  the  crest,  twenty  feet  from  where 
General  Buller  is  seated,  are  two  iron  rods,  like 
those  in  the  putting-green  of  a  golf  course. 
They  mark  the  line  of  direction  which  a  shell 

15 


WITH   BOTH  ARMIES 

must  take,  in  order  to  seek  out  the  enemy. 
Back  of  the  kopje,  where  they  cannot  see  the 
enemy,  where  they  cannot  even  see  the  hill 
upon  which  he  is  intrenched,  are  the  howitzers. 
Their  duty  is  to  aim  at  the  iron  rods,  and  vary 
their  aim  to  either  side  of  them  as  they  are  di- 
rected to  do  by  an  officer  on  the  crest.  Their 
shells  pass  a  few  yards  over  the  heads  of  the 
staff,  but  the  staff  has  confidence.  Those  three 
yards  are  as  safe  a  margin  as  a  hundred.  Their 
confidence  is  that  of  the  lady  in  spangles  at  a 
music-hall,  who  permits  her  husband  in  buck- 
skin to  shoot  apples  from  the  top  of  her  head. 
From  the  other  direction  come  the  shells  of 
the  Boers,  seeking  out  the  hidden  howitzers. 
They  pass  somewhat  higher,  crashing  into  the 
base  of  the  kopje,  sometimes  killing,  sometimes 
digging  their  own  ignominious  graves.  The 
staff  regard  them  with  the  same  indifference. 
One  of  them  tears  the  overcoat  upon  which 
Colonel  Stuart-Wortley  is  seated,  another  de- 
stroys his  diary.  His  men,  lying  at  his  feet 
among  the  red  rocks,  observe  this  with  wide 
eyes.  But  he  does  not  shift  his  position.  His 
answer  is,  that  his  men  cannot  shift  theirs. 
On  Friday,  February  23d,  the  InniskiUings, 

16 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

Dublins,  and  Connaughts  were  sent  out  to  take 
a  trench,  half-way  up  Railway  Hill.  The  at- 
tack was  one  of  those  frontal  attacks  which,  in 
this  war,  against  the  new  weapons,  have  added 
so  much  to  the  lists  of  killed  and  wounded  and 
to  the  prestige  of  the  men,  while  it  has,  in  an 
inverse  ratio,  hurt  the  prestige  of  the  men  by 
whom  the  attack  was  ordered.  The  result  of 
this  attack  was  peculiarly  disastrous.  It  was 
made  at  night,  and  as  soon  as  it  developed,  the 
Boers  retreated  to  the  trenches  on  the  crest  of 
the  hill,  and  threw  men  around  the  sides  to 
bring  a  cross-fire  to  bear  on  the  Englishmen. 
In  the  morning  the  Inniskillings  found  they 
had  lost  four  hundred  men,  and  ten  out  of  their 
fifteen  officers.  The  other  regiments  lost  as 
heavily.  The  following  Tuesday,  which  was 
the  anniversary  of  Majuba  Hill,  three  brigades, 
instead  of  a  regiment,  were  told  off  to  take  this 
same  Railway  Hill,  or  Pieter's,  as  it  was  later 
called,  on  the  flank,  and  with  it  to  capture  two 
others.  On  the  same  day,  nineteen  years  be- 
fore, the  English  had  lost  Majuba  Hill,  and 
their  hope  was  to  take  these  three  from  the 
Boers  for  the  one  they  had  lost,  and  open 
the   way   to    Bulwana    Mountain,    which  was 

17 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

the  last  bar  that  held  them  back  from  Lady- 
smith. 

The  first  two  of  the  three  hills  they  wanted 
were  shoulder  to  shoulder,  the  third  was  sepa- 
rated from  them  by  a  deep  ravine.  This  last 
was  the  highest,  and  in  order  that  the  attack 
should  be  successful,  it  was  necessary  to  seize 
it  first.  The  hills  stretched  for  three  miles ; 
they  were  about  one  thousand  two  hundred 
yards  high. 

For  three  hours  a  single  line  of  men  slipped 
and  stumbled  forward  along  the  muddy  bank 
of  the  river,  and  for  three  hours  the  artillery 
crashed,  spluttered,  and  stabbed  at  the  three 
hills  above  them,  scattering  the  rocks  and 
bursting  over  and  behind  the  Boer  trenches  on 
the  crest. 

As  is  their  custom,  the  Boers  remained  in- 
visible and  made  no  reply.  And  though  we 
knew  they  were  there,  it  seemed  inconceivable 
that  anything  human  could  live  under  such  a 
bombardment  of  shot,  bullets,  and  shrapnel. 
A  hundred  yards  distant,  on  our  right,  the  navy 
guns  were  firing  lyddite  that  burst  with  a  thick 
yellow  smoke  ;  on  the  other  side  Colt  automat- 
ics were  put-put-put-ing  a  stream   of  bullets ; 

i8 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

the  field-guns  and  the  howitzers  were  playing 
from  a  hill  half  a  mile  behind  us,  and  scattered 
among  the  rocks  about  us,  and  for  two  miles  on 
either  hand,  the  infantry  in  reserve  were  firing 
off  ammunition  at  any  part  of  the  three  hills 
they  happened  to  dislike  ! 

The  roar  of  the  navy's  Four-Point-Sevens, 
their  crash,  their  rush  as  they  passed,  the  shrill 
whine  of  the  shrapnel,  the  barking  of  the  howitz- 
ers, and  the  mechanical,  regular  rattle  of  the 
quick-firing  Maxims,  which  sounded  like  the 
clicking  of  many  mowing-machines  on  a  hot 
summer's  day,  tore  the  air  with  such  hideous 
noises  that  one's  skull  ached  from  the  concus- 
sion, and  one  could  only  be  heard  by  shouting. 
But  more  impressive  by  far  than  this  hot  chorus 
of  mighty  thunder  and  petty  hammering,  was 
the  roar  of  the  wind  which  was  driven  down 
into  the  valley  beneath,  and  which  swept  up 
again  in  enormous  waves  of  sound.  It  roared 
like  a  wild  hurricane  at  sea.  The  illusion  was 
so  complete,  that  you  expected,  by  looking 
down,  to  see  the  Tugela  lashing  at  her  banks, 
tossing  the  spray  hundreds  of  feet  in  air,  and 
battling  with  her  sides  of  rock.  It  was  like  the 
roar  of  Niagara  in  a  gale,  and  yet  when  you 

19 


WITH   BOTH  ARMIES 

did  look  below,  not  a  leaf  was  stirring,  and  the 
Tugela  was  slipping  forward,  flat  and  sluggish, 
and  in  peace. 

The  long  procession  of  yellow  figures  was 
still  advancing  along  the  bottom  of  the  valley, 
toward  the  right,  when  on  the  crest  of  the 
farthermost  hill  fourteen  of  them  appeared 
suddenly,  and  ran  forward  and  sprang  into  the 
trenches. 

Perched  against  the  blue  sky  on  the  highest 
and  most  distant  of  the  three  hills,  they  looked 
terribly  lonely  and  insufficient,  and  they  ran 
about,  this  way  and  that,  as  though  they  were 
very  much  surprised  to  find  themselves  where 
they  were.  Then  they  settled  down  into  the 
Boer  trench,  from  our  side  of  it,  and  began 
firing,  their  officer,  as  his  habit  is,  standing  up 
behind  them.  The  hill  they  had  taken  had 
evidently  been  abandoned  to  them  by  the 
enemy,  and  the  fourteen  men  in  khaki  had 
taken  it  by  *'  default."  But  they  disappeared 
so  suddenly  into  the  trench,  that  we  knew 
they  were  not  enjoying  their  new  position  in 
peace,  and  everyone  looked  below  them,  to 
see  the  arriving  reinforcements.  They  came 
at  last,  to  the  number  of  ten,  and  scampered 

20 


WITH  BULLER'S   COLUMN 

about  just  as  the  others  had  done,  looking  for 
cover.  It  seemed  as  if  we  could  almost  hear 
the  singing  of  the  bullet  when  one  of  them 
dodged,  and  it  was  with  a  distinct  sense  of  re- 
lief, and  of  freedom  from  further  responsibil- 
ity, that  we  saw  the  ten  disappear  also,  and  be- 
come part  of  the  yellow  stones  about  them. 
Then  a  very  wonderful  movement  began  to 
agitate  the  men  upon  the  two  remaining  hills. 
They  began  to  creep  up  them  as  you  have 
seen  seaweed  rise  with  the  tide  and  envelop  a 
rock.  They  moved  in  regiments,  but  each 
man  was  as  distinct  as  is  a  letter  of  the  alpha- 
bet in  each  word  on  this  page,  black  with 
letters.  We  began  to  follow  the  fortunes  of 
individual  letters.  It  was  a  most  selfish  and 
cowardly  occupation,  for  you  knew  you  were 
in  no  greater  danger  than  you  would  be  in 
looking  through  the  glasses  of  a  mutoscope. 
The  battle  unrolled  before  you  like  a  pano- 
rama. The  guns  on  our  side  of  the  valley  had 
ceased,  the  hurricane  in  the  depths  below  had 
instantly  spent  itself,  and  the  birds  and  insects 
had  again  begun  to  fill  our  hill  with  drowsy 
twitter  and  song.  But  on  the  other,  half  the 
men   were  wrapping  the  base  of   the  hill   in 

21 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

khaki,  which  rose  higher  and  higher,  growing 
looser  and  less  tightly  wrapt  as  it  spun  upward. 
Half  way  to  the  crest  there  was  a  broad  open 
space  of  green  grass,  and  above  that  a  yellow 
bank  of  earth,  which  supported  the  track  of 
the  railroad.  This  green  space  spurted  with 
tiny  geysers  of  yellow  dust.  Where  the  bul- 
lets came  from  or  who  sent  them  we  could  not 
see.  But  the  loose  ends  of  the  bandage  of 
khaki  were  stretching  across  this  green  space 
and  the  yellow  spurts  of  dust  rose  all  around 
them.  The  men  crossed  this  fire-zone  warily, 
looking  to  one  side  or  the  other,  as  the  bullets 
struck  the  earth  heavily,  like  drops  of  rain 
before  a  shower. 

The  men  had  their  head  and  shoulders  bent 
as  though  they  thought  a  roof  was  about  to 
fall  on  them ;  some  ran  from  rock  to  rock, 
seeking  cover  properly ;  others  scampered 
toward  the  safe  vantage  ground  behind  the 
railroad  embankment ;  others  advanced  lei- 
surely, like  men  playing  golf.  The  silence, 
after  the  hurricane  of  sounds,  was  painful ;  we 
could  not  hear  even  the  Boer  rifles.  The  men 
moved  like  figures  in  a  dream,  without  firing  a 
shot.     They  seemed  each  to  be  acting  on  his 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

own  account,  without  unison  or  organization. 
As  I  have  said,  you  ceased  considering  the 
scattered  whole,  and  became  intent  on  the  ad- 
ventures of  individuals.  These  fell  so  sud- 
denly, that  you  waited  with  great  anxiety  to 
learn  whether  they  had  dropped  to  dodge  a 
bullet  or  whether  one  had  found  them.  The 
men  came  at  last  from  every  side,  and  from 
out  of  every  ridge  and  dried-up  waterway. 
Open  spaces  which  had  been  green  a  moment 
before,  were  suddenly  dyed  yellow  with  them. 
Where  a  company  had  been  clinging  to  the 
railroad  embankment,  there  stood  one  regi- 
ment holding  it,  and  another  sweeping  over  it. 
Heights  that  had  seemed  the  goal,  became  the 
resting-place  of  the  stretcher-bearers,  until  at 
last  no  part  of  the  hill  remained  unpopulated, 
save  a  high  bulging  rampart  of  unprotected 
and  open  ground.  And  then,  suddenly,  com- 
ing from  the  earth  itself,  apparently,  one  man 
ran  across  this  open  space  and  leaped  on  top 
of  the  trench  which  crowned  the  hill.  He  was 
fully  fifteen  yards  in  advance  of  all  the  rest, 
entirely  unsupported,  and  alone.  And  he  had 
evidently  planned  it  so,  for  he  took  off  his 
helmet  and  waved  it,  and  stuck  it  on  his  rifle 

23 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

and  waved  it  again,  and  then  suddenly  clapped 
it  on  his  head  and  threw  his  gun  to  his  shoul- 
der. He  stood  so,  pointing  down  into  the 
trench,  and  it  seemed  as  though  we  could  hear 
him  calling  upon  the  Boers  behind  it  to  sur- 
render. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  last  of  the  three 
hills  was  mounted  by  the  West  Yorks,  who 
were  mistaken  by  their  own  artillery  for  Boers, 
and  fired  upon  both  by  the  Boers  and  by  their 
own  shrapnel  and  lyddite.  Four  men  were 
wounded,  and,  to  save  themselves,  a  line  of 
them  stood  up  at  full  length  on  the  trench  and 
cheered  and  waved  at  the  artillery  until  it  had 
ceased  to  play  upon  them.  The  Boers  con- 
tinued to  fire  upon  them  with  rifles,  for  over 
two  hours.  But  it  was  only  a  demonstration 
to  cover  the  retreat  of  the  greater  number,  and 
at  daybreak  the  hills  were  in  complete  and 
peaceful  possession  of  the  English.  These 
hills  were  a  part  of  the  same  Railway  Hill 
which  four  nights  before  the  Inniskillings  and 
a  composite  regiment  had  attempted  to  take 
by  a  frontal  attack,  with  the  loss  of  six  hun- 
dred men,  among  whom  were  three  colonels. 

By  this  flank  attack,  and  by  using  nine  regi- 

24 


WITH   BULLER'S   COLUMN 

merits  instead  of  one,  the  same  hills  and  two 
others  were  taken  with  two  hundred  casualties. 
The  fact  that  this  battle,  which  was  called  the 
Battle  of  Pieter's  Hill,  and  the  surrender  of 
General  Cronje  and  his  forces  to  Lord  Roberts, 
both  of  which  events  took  place  on  the  anni- 
versary of  the  battle  of  Majuba  Hill,  made 
the  whole  of  Buller's  column  feel  that  the  ill 
memory  of  that  disaster  had  been  effaced. 


25 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    SIEGE    OF    LADYSMITH 

TO  anyone  who  has  seen  Ladysmith,  the 
wonder  grows,  not  only  that  it  was  ever 
relieved,  but  that  it  was  ever  defended.  In- 
deed, had  the  advice  of  General  Sir  George 
White  been  followed  in  the  first  place,  the  town 
would  have  been  abandoned  to  the  Boers.  For 
a  garrison  at  Ladysmith  is  in  a  strategic  posi- 
tion not  unlike  that  of  a  bear  in  a  bear-pit  at 
which  the  boys  around  the  top  of  the  pit  are 
throwing  shells  instead  of  buns. 

Now  that  the  cards  have  been  played,  every- 
one can  see  that  the  natural  defence  of  Natal 
is  at  the  Tugela  River,  on  the  very  hills  from 
which  the  Boers  repulsed  General  Buller  at 
Colenso,  at  Spion  Kop,  and  at  Vaal  Krantz. 

The  fact  that  the  town  of  Ladysmith  lay 
outside  this  marvellous  breastwork  of  hills  and 
ridges  should  have  been  treated  as  one  of  the 

misfortunes  of  war,  and  for  the  greater  good  of 

26 


THE  SIEGE  OF  LADYSMITH 

the  greater  number  the  town  should  have 
been  sacrificed  to  the  enemy,  and  all  the  resi- 
dents and  the  garrison  withdrawn  for  twelve 
miles  inside  the  great  complex  mass  of  hills 
which  guard  the  twisted  course  of  the  Tugela. 
Ladysmith  might  have  been  burned,  few 
stores  would  have  been  looted,  but  corrugated 
iron,  which  is  the  chief  architectural  feature  of 
Ladysmith,  is  cheap,  and  the  shop-owners  could 
not  have  lost  much  more  by  Boer  looting  than 
they  did  by  Boer  shells.  That  would  have 
been  the  apparent  loss;  the  gain  would  have 
been  in  the  releasing  of  13,000  troops  for  ser- 
vice on  the  Tugela  and  the  freeing  of  Buller's 
column  of  25,000  men  to  go  where  they  were 
needed  for  the  more  direct  prosecution  of  the 
war.  Hundreds  of  lives  would  have  been 
saved,  hundreds  of  wounded  and  sick  would  not 
have  filled  the  hospitals,  and  1 3,000  men  would 
not  have  been  reduced  to  skeletons,  and  need 
not  have  been  laid  by  in  idleness  until  they  had 
recovered  strength  and  health.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  history  of  the  British  Army  would  have 
lost  a  glorious  page  which  has  been  added  by 
the  defenders  of  Ladysmith,  and  the  record  of 
the  stubborn,  desperate  fighting  of  the  column 

27 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

coming  to  the  rescue.  For  no  matter  who  in 
authority  may  be  criticised  for  the  handling  of 
that  column,  it  did  what  it  was  ordered  to  do  as 
well  as  it  could  have  been  done.  That  what  it 
was  ordered  to  do  was  not  always  what  a  more 
quick-thinking,  imaginative,  and  brilliant  leader 
might  have  deemed  best,  does  not  reflect  on 
the  men  ''who  went  and  did"  as  they  were 
commanded. 

The  chief  difficulties  which  confronted  both 
General  Duller  and  General  White  were  those 
of  geography. 

To  protect  Ladysmith  it  was  necessary  to 
fortify  and  guard  a  circle  fully  fourteen  miles 
in  circumference,  and  with  a  force  so  small  that 
at  one  time  only  three  hundred  and  fifty  men 
were  available  to  hold  each  mile  of  the  ring. 
Had  the  Boers  been  commanded  by  anyone 
except  General  Joubert,  had  they  attacked  more 
frequently,  instead  of  resting  content  with  bom- 
barding, the  town  would  undoubtedly  have 
fallen,  for  the  positions  were  so  widely  sepa- 
rated that  reinforcing  one  from  another  was  a 
matter  of  the  greatest  difficulty,  and  could  only 
have  been  accomplished  after  a  most  dangerous 

lapse  of  time. 

28 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

General  Duller  for  his  part  was  confronted 
by  probably  the  worst  country  for  attack  and 
the  most  admirable  for  defence  in  South  Africa, 
or  in  any  other  continent.  The  fact  that  he 
was  two  months  and  fifteen  days  in  advanc- 
ing twelve  miles,  or  from  December  15th  to 
February  28th  in  progressing  from  Colenso 
to  Ladysmith,  is  the  best  description  of  the 
country  that  anyone  could  give. 

There  must  have  been  some  most  powerful 
influence  against  that  of  General  White,  and 
some  excellent  reasons  for  the  holding  of  Lady- 
smith,  to  overcome  the  obvious  objections  to 
its  defence.  This  influence  was  probably  that 
which  was  brought  to  bear  by  the  Natal  Gov- 
ernment, and  the  reason  it  urged  for  hoMing 
Ladysmith  was  that  were  it  deserted,  the  dis- 
loyal Dutch  in  the  Colony  would  look  upon 
such  an  act  as  a  sign  of  British  weakness  and 
would  be  encouraged  to  join  or  to  secretly  assist 
the  enemy.  At  least  such  a  withdrawal  would 
threaten  the  safety  of  the  Colony  by  fomenting 
disaffection  and  suggesting  a  loss  of  British 
prestige. 

So  it  may  have  been  for  ''  moral  efl"ect "  that 

Ladysmith  was  defended,  and  in  the  end  the 

29 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

plucky,  undaunted  conduct  of  the  besieged 
garrison  was  no  doubt  of  excellent  moral  effect, 
but  if  the  English  had  abandoned  Ladysmith 
and  held  the  hills  about  Colenso  instead  of 
allowing  the  Boers  to  hold  them,  BuUer's  re- 
pulse there  would  not  have  taken  place ;  and 
the  moral  effect  of  that  upon  the  disloyal  Dutch 
was  most  unfortunate. 

In  the  Ladysmith  Lyre  and  in  the  Bomb-shell 
Poems,  written  and  printed  during  the  siege, 
one  obtains  some  very  interesting  side-lights 
on  the  state  of  mind  of  those  who  were  then 
languishing  in  the  "  Doomed  City,"  as  was  its 
premature  epitaph. 

It  seems  that  two  weeks  was  the  limit  orig- 
inally set  by  the  English  for  the  duration  of 
the  siege,  but  even  before  that  time  had  passed, 
and  when  the  Boer  guns  began  to  increase 
upon  the  surrounding  hills,  a  neutral  camp  was 
established  four  miles  from  Ladysmith,  where 
the  sick  and  wounded  and  non-combatants, 
both  women  and  children,  might  withdraw  and 
be  free  from  shell-fire.  General  Joubert  him- 
self selected  the  location  of  this  camp  and 
received  General  White's  promise  that  there 
would  be  no  communication  between  it  and 

30 


THE  SIEGE   OF  LADYSMITH 

the  city  except  once  each  day,  when  the  pro- 
vision train  went  out  with  rations  under  the 
protection  of  the  Red  Cross  flag.  Of  the  two 
places,  in  spite  of  the  shell-fire,  the  town  would 
seem  to  have  been  much  more  desirable,  for 
the  camp  was  a  literal  camp  under  canvas,  out 
on  the  flat  windy  plain,  where  many  hundreds 
of  colonials  and  natives  of  India  were  huddled 
together  without  comfort,  work,  or  source  of 
amusement.  To  the  men  at  least,  the  neutral 
camp  must  have  been  a  place  of  torment  at 
the  time,  and  it  remains  a  lasting  reproach, 
ready  at  the  hand  of  an  enemy  forever  after. 
Indeed,  so  deeply  did  the  men  who  remained 
in  Ladysmith  make  those  who  had  left  it  for 
the  camp  feel  their  inferiority,  that  after  the 
siege  an  official  utterance  had  to  clear  the  air 
in  their  behalf,  and  remind  the  more  valiant 
who  had  refused  to  take  refuge  in  the  camp, 
that  those  who  had  done  so  had  been  ordered 
there  for  the  good  of  the  community.  But  in 
spite  of  this,  for  years  to  come  in  Ladysmith 
the  easiest  brick  to  throw  at  a  citizen  will  be 
the  fact  that  during  the  siege  he  lived  with  the 
women  and  the  children  in  the  neutral  camp. 
Those  men  who  remained  in  the  town  formed 

31 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

a  Home  Guard,  and  the  women  did  their  part 
in  helping  to  nurse  the  wounded.  At  first,  be- 
fore they  became  accustomed  to  the  shells, 
large  bomb-proofs  were  built,  cellars  were  dug, 
and  holes  of  different  degrees  of  depth  and 
darkness  were  tunnelled  in  the  banks  of  the 
river  and  in  the  gardens  of  the  houses.  Some 
of  these  were  reserved  for  the  women,  and  others 
for  the  men,  and  in  them  the  unhappy  inhabi- 
tants would  sit  as  long  as  the  firing  continued, 
playing  cards  by  the  light  of  a  candle,  or  read- 
ing or  sleeping. 

Life  in  Ladysmith  was  a  little  worse  than 
being  confined  in  a  jail,  for  a  jail  has  at  least 
the  advantage  of  being  a  comparatively  safe 
and  secluded  habitation.  The  smoke  of  **  Long 
Tom  "  on  Bulwana,  which  was  the  gun  of  the 
greatest  terror  to  the  inhabitant,  could  be  seen 
for  twenty-five  seconds  before  the  shell  struck 
in  the  town,  and,  in  order  to  warn  people  of 
its  coming,  sentinels  were  constantly  on  watch 
to  look  for  the  smoke  and  give  the  alarm.  At 
one  hotel  the  signal  was  the  ringing  of  a  bell ; 
the  Indian  coolies  used  an  iron  bar  swung  from 
a  rope  which  they  beat  with  another  iron  bar, 
and  the  different  regiments   enjoyed  the  ser- 

32 


=/. 


C/3 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

vices  of  their  buglers.  So  that  the  instant  a 
white  puff  of  smoke  and  a  hot  flash  of  fire  ap- 
peared on  Buhvana,  there  would  be  a  thrilling 
toot  on  the  bugles,  a  chorus  of  gongs,  bells, 
and  tin  pans,  and  the  sound  of  many  scamper- 
ing footsteps.  It  was  like  a  village  of  prairie 
dogs  diving  into  their  underground  homes. 
But  the  familiarity  soon  bred  indifference,  and 
after  a  few  weeks,  only  a  small  number  of  the 
people  sought  refuge  under  the  iron  roofs  and 
sand-bags,  but  walked  the  streets  as  freely  as 
though  the  shells  weighing  a  hundred  pounds 
were  as  innocent  of  harm  as  the  dropping  of 
the  gentle  dew  from  heaven. 

Indeed,  the  shells  were  not  the  chief  danger 
that  walked  abroad  in  the  streets  of  Ladysmith; 
lack  of  food  and  exercise,  bad  water,  and  life 
underground  soon  bred  fever,  and  its  victims 
outnumbered  those  of  Long  Tom  nearly  ten  to 
one.  By  this  time  the  military  authorities  had 
complete  control  of  all  food,  and  distributed  it 
impartially.  They  ''  commandeered  "  the  hens, 
who,  so  it  is  said,  refused  to  lay  eggs  as  soon 
as  they  found  they  were  worth  six  shillings  a 
piece,  and  ordered  all  bread-stuffs  to  be  sold  at 
public   auction.      They   seized   cows   and    all 

33 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

kinds  of  eatables,  for  which  they  paid  a  fair 
price  and  which  were  reserved  for  the  good  of 
all.     The  whole  town,  without  distinction,  was 
on  fixed  rations,  which  the   people   drew  each 
day  at    appointed    places.       The    women    and 
children  say  that  the  thing  they  most  missed 
was  not  the  heavy  food,  but  milk  for  their  tea ; 
the  men,  without  one  dissenting  voice,  tell  me 
that  the  loss  of  tobacco  was  their  greatest  hard- 
ship.    During  our  war  with  Spain,  I  suggested 
that  our  commissariat  officers  made  a  mistake 
before  Santiago  in  classing  tobacco  with  "  lux- 
uries" and  "officers'  supplies,"  and  in  not  hur- 
rying it  to  the  front  with  the  bacon  and  coffee, 
and  I  was  severely  criticised  for  this  and  asked 
if  I  wanted  people  to  believe  that  our  soldiers 
were  so  effeminate  as  to  be  unhappy  without 
such  luxuries  as  cigarettes  and  eau  de  cologne. 
As  an  answer,  it  is  interesting  to  read  in  the 
official  list  of  the  prices  brought  at  auction  in 
Ladysmith,  that  while  a  tin  of  milk  sold  for 
$2.50,  a  quarter  of  a  tin   of  tobacco   brought 

$15. 

In  time  two  thousand  horses  were  killed  and 

served  out  instead  of  beef  ;  and  starch,  with 

bluing  in   it,  originally  intended  for  washing 

34 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

clothes,  and  bran  were  made  into  a  bread. 
Canary-seed  was  beaten  up  into  meal,  and  the 
violet  powder,  which  some  women  put  on  their 
fair  faces,  was  made  into  the  most  delicate  of 
rice-cakes.  These  deprivations,  which  seemed 
tragedies  at  the  time,  now  form  the  humors  of 
the  siege.  They  are  the  facts  which  the  be- 
sieged first  tell  you — they  are  the  incidents  to 
which  they  will  always  refer.  They  will  never 
sit  down  to  a  good  dinner  when  a  stranger  is 
present  but  that  they  will  say,  ''  This  is  a  little 
better  than  corn-starch  and  horse-meat,  isn't 
it  ? "  They  were  saying  it  a  day  after  the  siege 
was  raised — they  will  still  be  saying  it  to  their 
grandchildren.  These  are  the  humors  of  the 
siege,  because  the  siege  has  been  lifted  ;  the 
real  tragedies  of  the  siege  are  as  real  tragedies 
to-day  as  they  were  when  the  bodies  of  Colonel 
Dick-Cunyngham,  Lieutenant  Egerton  of  the 
Powerful,  the  Earl  of  Ava,  and  George  W. 
Steevens  were  carried  each  under  the  Union 
Jack  to  the  little  cemetery  by  the  Klip  River. 
I  speak  only  of  these  out  of  the  many  tragedies, 
because,  perhaps,  they  were  to  the  public  who 
knew  them  by  their  deeds,  as  well  as  to  the 
friends  who  loved  them  for  themselves,  the  men 

35 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

who  will  be  missed  the  most  and  for  the  longest 
time.  They  were  all  young,  able,  and  brave. 
Dick-Cunyngham  gained  the  Victoria  Cross  in 
Afghanistan  and  survived  his  wound  at  Elands- 
laagte  only  to  be  killed  at  last  while  riding  out 
at  the  head  of  the  regiment,  by  a  chance,  spent 
bullet,  fired  by  an  unseen  enemy,  and  while  he 
himself  was  unseen  by  the  hand  that  fired  it. 
Egerton,  whose  navy  guns  saved  the  day  at 
Lombards  Kop,  was  struck  by  a  shell  that 
entered  the  embrasure  of  his  own  parapet  and 
tore  away  both  his  legs.  Yet  so  great  was  the 
courage  of  the  young  man  that  when  his 
gunners  raised  him  in  their  arms  he  looked 
down  grimly  and  said,  '*  They've  done  for  my 
cricket,  haven't  they  ?  "  An  hour  later,  so  the 
officers  tell  me  who  were  in  the  hospital  when 
he  was  carried  there,  he  was  still  cheerful,  and 
smoking  a  cigar,  and  apologizing  for  the 
trouble  he  was  giving  to  the  jackies  who  car- 
ried him.     An  hour  later  he  died. 

Lord  Ava  had  already  seen  war  as  a  soldier 
in  South  Africa,  though  it  is  not  at  the  mess- 
table  of  one  regiment  alone  that  he  will  be 
missed,  but  in  widely  separated  parts  of  the 
world.   He  had  been  with  his  father  in  Canada, 

36 


The  Earl  of  Ava. 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

India,  and  Europe,  and  he  was  as  well  known 
in  New  York  and  Ottawa  as  in  London  and 
Paris.  His  was  a  particularly  gay,  lovable, 
manly  nature,  and  he  was  brave  to  the  edge  of 
recklessness,  always  volunteering  for  those 
actions  in  which  his  own  regiment  was  not 
engaged.  When  he  died  of  the  wounds  he  re- 
ceived at  the  Battle  of  Caesar's  Camp,  his  body 
was  followed  to  the  grave  by  Tommies,  offi- 
cers, and  civilians,  each  of  whom  mourned  him 
as  a  personal  friend.  His  father  gave  the  city 
of  Ava  and  all  of  Upper  Burmah  to  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  ;  his  son  gave  his  life.  And  in 
return  the  empire  gives  him  six  feet  of  earth 
by  the  muddy  waters  of  the  Klip  River.  It 
was  a  fine  end,  but  it  is  hard  to  see  the  mean- 
ing of  it. 

The  death  of  George  W.  Steevens  was  as 
hard  and  as  difficult  a  problem.  He  had  but 
only  begun  a  career  of  brilliant  and  helpful 
work.  It  was  work  peculiarly  his  own.  He 
borrowed  no  one's  point  of  view,  but  by  a 
marvellous  instinct  and  intuition  picked  out  in 
all  he  saw  the  essential,  the  dramatic,  the  hu- 
man, and  the  humorous,  and  expressed  it  so 
that  others  saw  it  for  themselves.     His  last 

37 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

letter  shows  how  the  siege  filled  him  with 
boredom  and  ennui.  In  one  letter  he  says  : 
*'  Come  quickly  to  our  relief  or  we  die — not  of 
shells,  but  of  dulness."  I  do  not  know  that  I 
can  make  it  clear,  but  it  seems  in  some  way  to 
add  to  the  pathos  of  his  end  that  it  should 
have  come  to  the  man  who  went  to  Khartoum 
with  Kitchener,  to  Calcutta  with  Curzon,  and 
to  Rennes  with  Dreyfus — when  he  was  long- 
ing to  be  up  and  doing,  when  all  of  those  fine 
instincts  and  possibilities  of  perception  and 
powers  of  expression  were  in  rebellion  at  being 
kept  idle,  and  were  starving  for  the  action,  and 
incident,  and  color  of  w^hich  his  hand  was  the 
master. 

The  Battle  of  Colenso  could  be  heard  across 
the  hills  beyond  Ladysmith,  and  promised  that 
relief  was  imminent.  For  was  not  Buller 
coming  at  last,  and  were  not  those  his  guns 
forcing  back  the  Boers  ?  Throughout  the  long 
hot  day  of  December  3d  the  imprisoned  peo- 
ple listened  with  awe  and  hope  to  the  rolling 
thunder  of  the  great  cannon.  They  surely 
proclaimed  the  end.  In  a  week,  in  a  day, 
Buller  would  be  across  the  Tugela,  the  Boers 

38 


Georije  W.  Steevens. 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

would  abandon  Bulwana,  at  any  moment 
might  they  not  see  Buller's  cavalry  galloping 
across  the  plain  ?  The  people  climbed  up  to 
the  top  of  Convent  Hill  for  the  first  view  of 
them.  But  instead  came  a  story  of  dismay, 
the  story  of  Buller's  repulse,  and  then  silence, 
weeks  of  silence,  until  it  seemed  as  if  the 
world  was  going  on  without  thought  of  them, 
and  they  sank  back  like  shipwrecked  sailors 
who  watch  the  parting  sail  disappearing  below 
the  horizon.  But  they  were  not  in  despair  ; 
at  least,  the  garrison  was  not.  It  was  too  busy 
guarding  the  long  line  of  defences  to  give  way 
to  any  such  weakness  or  to  abuse  its  country- 
men. Of  course,  the  civilians  were  indignant, 
or  some  of  them  were.  They  whined  about 
their  lost  property,  they  vowed  if  they  ever  got 
out  that  they  would  be  jolly  well  paid  for  their 
lost  property — they  had  no  doubt  but  that  the 
Boers  had  stolen  all  their  chickens  and  dese- 
crated their  farm-houses,  of  one-storied  brick 
with  a  tin  roof,  by  turning  them  into  hospitals 
for  the  wounded  farmers.  Someone  must  pay 
the  colonial  for  such  outrages,  and  for  their 
chickens,  too — the  British  Empire  must  not 
think  she  can  turn  one  of  her  colonies  into  a 

39 


WITH  BOTH  ARMIES 

battle-ground  and  march  her  troops  across  it, 
unless  she  expects  to  pay  for  those  chickens. 
They  are  unselfish,  loyal  people,  the  Natal 
colonials.  But  they  are  very  independent,  and 
for  fear  you  may  not  notice  it  by  their  man- 
ner— they  tell  you  so.  "  We  colonials,"  they 
say;  **vveare  independent."  They  are  so  in- 
dependent that  they  charged  the  Tommies  who 
had  come  seven  thousand  miles  to  fight  for 
them,  and  who  were  protecting  their  dusty, 
corrugated-zinc  town  with  their  lives,  a  shilling 
each  for  slices  of  bread  and  molasses. 

Ladysmith  was  not  entirely  cut  off  from  the 
world  ;  Kaffir  boys  would  for  $ioo  carry  mes- 
sages through  to  Chieveley,  and  the  heliograph, 
after  losing  its  way  and  tapping  many  Boer 
wires,  and  being  most  scandalously  insulted 
by  the  Boer  mirrors  for  doing  so,  finally  es- 
tablished communication  with  Ladysmith  and 
talked  to  it  whenever  the  sun  shone  by  day, 
and  by  night  with  locomotive  head-lights  and 
search-lights.  The  officer  who  finally  called  up 
Ladysmith,  is  young  Captain  Cayser,  and  the 
story  of  his  efforts  to  communicate  with  the 
besieged  garrison  is  a  most  creditable  and  cu- 
rious one.     For  many  days  he  trudged  up  one 

40 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

high  hill  after  another  and  flashed  his  mirror, 
but  without  response,  except  from  the  Boers 
in  between.  And  they,  when  he  thought  he 
had  ''got"  Ladysmith  on  the  'phone,  would 
shock  and  undeceive  him  by  some  such  pleas- 
antry as  ''  How  do  you  like  our  pom-poms  ?" 
or  **Go  to  Hell."  Not  discouraged.  Captain 
Cayser  continued  to  climb  many  hills,  until  at 
last  the  mirror  of  Ladysmith  winked  back  at 
him.  **  Who  are  you  ?  "  Cayser  asked.  **  I 
am  Walker  of  the  Devons,"  came  back  the 
answer.  But  Captain  Cayser  had  grown  sus- 
picious, and  in  order  to  make  quite  sure  who 
it  was  with  whom  he  was  talking,  he  flashed 
back,  ''  Find  Captain  Brooks  of  the  Gordons 
and  ask  him  the  name  of  Captain  Cayser's 
country-place  in  Scotland."  A  hurried  search 
was  made  for  Brooks  of  the  Gordons,  and  the 
answer  came  back  :  '*  We  are  acquainted  with 
the  name  of  your  home  in  Perthshire."  "Then 
use  it  for  the  code  word,"  Cayser  commanded, 
and  for  the  remainder  of  the  siege  the  name  of 
Cayser's  country  home  was  used  to  send  every 
cipher  message  that  passed  out  of  Ladysmith 
over  the  heads  of  the  Boers.  It  is  further 
related   that   when   the   signal   officers   found 

41 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

Brooks  of  the  Gordons  and  said,  "  Captain 
Cayser  has  just  heliographed  in  to  ask  you  to 
tell  him  the  name  of  his  country  house,"  that 
officer  remarked,  '*  Well,  I  always  thought 
Cayser  was  an  ass,  but  I  didn't  think  he'd  for- 
get the  name  of  his  own  home."  The  picture 
of  a  gentleman  heliographing  violently  into  a 
besieged  city  to  find  out  where  he  lived  has 
certainly  a  humorous  side. 

One  of  the  most  pitiful  stories  of  the  siege 
concerns  not  human  beings  but  their  fellow- 
sufferers,  the  horses.  When  it  became  evident 
that  the  garrison  could  no  longer  feed  the  hun- 
dreds of  horses  in  the  artillery  and  cavalry  reg- 
iments, and  that  the  corn  must  be  saved  for 
the  men,  a  certain  few  of  the  horses  were 
picked  out  to  do  scouting,  others  to  be  killed 
and  eaten,  and  about  three  hundred  were  stam- 
peded. 

The  horses  had  never  been  taught  to  eat 
grass,  so  after  a  happy  morning's  frolic  they  all 
came  charging  back  at  meal-time,  neighing  for 
their  oats  and  water,  and  it  became  necessary 
to  drive  them  out  again  and  post  sentries  at 
the  entrance  of  the  streets  to  keep  them  out. 

For  a  few   days  the  town  was  filled   with 

42 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

stampeded  horses.  On  the  second  day  a  horse 
from  one  regiment  came  across  his  gun-mate, 
who  had  pulled  the  same  piece  of  artillery  with 
him  five  years  before  in  India,  and  the  two 
poor  things  came  galloping  proudly  back  into 
the  lines  of  the  old  regiment  and  up  to  the 
very  crew  of  their  old  gun.  I  hope  the  men 
had  no  such  stern  sense  of  duty  as  to  make 
them  turn  their  old  comrades  out  again. 

Two  months  and  two  weeks  had  passed 
since  the  siege  was  declared  before  General 
Buller  raised  the  hopes  of  the  Ladysmith  gar- 
rison by  again  resuming  his  attack.  This  at- 
tack continued  for  six  weeks,  the  last  two 
weeks  being  days  and  nights  of  unceasing  bat- 
tle. There  was  hardly  an  hour  during  his  ad- 
vance that  it  was  not  announced  in  Ladysmith 
that  General  Buller  was  ''coming  in."  When 
he  was  at  Spion  Kop  and  his  guns  seemed 
almost  within  range  of  the  city,  everyone  was 
rejoicing  that  the  end  had  come.  The  troops 
of  the  garrison  fought  with  fresh  courage,  peo- 
ple accepted  their  biscuit  and  a  half  per  day 
with  a  better  grace,  feeling  that  starvation  was 
to  last  but  a  few  hours  longer.  And  from  the 
hill-tops  came  the  camp  rumors  of  clouds  of 

43 


WITH   BOTH  ARMIES 

dust  raised  by  approaching  cavalry,  of  British 
helmets  seen  upon  the  nearest  ridges,  of  the 
rattle  of  Maxims  coming  from  not  more  than 
three  miles  distant.  Again  and  again  the 
people  flocked  into  the  street  or  gathered  on 
Convent  Hill,  and  as  often  returned  to  their 
houses  or  tents  disheartened  and  undeceived. 
The  men  of  the  garrison  were  becoming  hope- 
lessly weak.  They  could  not  march  two  miles, 
and  eight  of  every  thirteen  soldiers  had  been 
or  still  were  on  the  hospital-list.  Had  the 
Boers  attacked  again  as  they  did  on  the  fa- 
mous 6th  of  January,  when  men  lay  for  hours 
within  forty  feet  of  each  other,  each  behind  a 
rock  and  each  waiting  for  the  other  to  show 
even  a  foot  or  a  finger,  it  is  almost  certain  that 
the  garrison  would  not  have  had  the  physical 
strength  to  resist,  and  Ladysmith  would  have 
fallen. 

In  the  meanwhile  Buller's  men  were  fighting 
desperately.  They  had  abandoned  their  tents 
and  were  living  in  the  open,  sleeping  among 
the  rocks  and  the  high  grass,  on  some  days 
drenched  for  hours  by  heavy  tropical  showers, 
and  sleeping  all  night  in  uniforms  as  wet  as 
sea- weed.    Buller  fared  no  better  than  his  men, 

44 


THE   SIEGE   OF  LADYSMITH 

and  slept  under  the  stars,  sick  officers  lay  under 
bushes,  and  the  staff  carried  on  the  work  of  the 
army  under  wagons  through  which  the  rain 
poured  upon  their  books  and  papers.  To  the 
man  who  read  of  Buller's  slow  advance  in  the 
daily  despatches,  who  measured  the  distance  be- 
tween Colenso  and  Ladysmith  on  the  map  and 
found  them  only  twelve  miles  apart,  the  delay 
of  the  column  seemed  incomprehensible. 

''  Twelve  miles,"  he  exclaimed  ;  ''  they've 
been  six  weeks  going  twelve  miles.  Why,  our 
troops  in  the  Civil  War  used  to  march  forty 
miles  in  one  day."  It  is  useless,  unless  one  has 
seen  the  country  through  which  Duller  was 
forced  to  pass,  to  attempt  to  understand  the 
task  which  lay  before  him.  A  general  in  his 
report  who  emphasizes  difficulties  is  classed 
with  the  workman  who  makes  his  bad  tools  an 
excuse  for  bad  work,  and  the  public  at  home 
grow  impatient.  And,  in  consequence,  much 
that  might  have  been  said  in  explanation  was 
left  unreported,  and  the  people  in  Ladysmith 
who  blamed  the  column  and  those  outside  of 
Ladysmith  who  could  not  comprehend  its  tardy 
progress,  would  have  been  more  tolerant  could 
they  have  seen  the  mountains,  hills,  and  ridges 

45 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

which  nature  had  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Boers.  Bloch,  the  authority  on  modern  war, 
believes  that  with  the  new  weapons  a  force  in- 
trenched and  on  the  defensive  is  to  the  attack- 
ing force  in  the  proportion  of  eight  men  to  one, 
so  if  this  be  correct,  the  Boers  outnumbered  the 
English  in  that  proportion,  and  the  25,000  of 
the  latter  were  opposed  to  a  position  equal  to 
200,000  men  on  an  open  plain.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  English  outnumbered  the  Boers  on 
different  days  from  five  to  one  up  to  twenty  to 
one.  Their  chief  difficulty  was  in  the  country, 
and  another  great  difficulty  was  the  fact  that 
General  BuUer  was  too  slow  in  following  up  an 
advantage.  After  he  had  taken  a  position  he 
would  reinforce  it  so  leisurely  that  he  allowed 
the  Boers  ample  time  in  which  to  fortify  and 
enfilade  him  from  another.  Also,  he  had  suf- 
fered so  heavily  at  Colenso  in  casualties  that  he 
was  sensitive  of  losing  more  men,  and  in  order 
to  save  life,  attacked  with  forces  so  insufficient 
in  numbers  that  many  men  were  sacrificed  for 
that  reason.  This  was  notably  the  case  at  the 
fight  at  Railway  Hill,  when  the  Inniskillings 
and  a  few  Dublins  and  Connaughts  were  sent 

to  take  a  position  by  frontal  attack  and  lost  six 

46 


THE   SIEGE   OF   LADYSMITH 

hundred  ;  a  few  days  later  the  same  position 
was  attacked  on  the  flank  with  nine  regiments, 
and  as  a  result  the  Boers  abandoned  it,  and  al- 
though there  were  nearly  eight  thousand  more 
men  engaged,  the  loss  was  only  two  hundred. 
Buller's  continuous  battles  demonstrated  that  a 
fortified  position  may  be  shelled  for  half  a  day 
without  the  enemy  being  driven  so  far  from  it 
that  he  cannot  return  in  time  to  meet  a  charge 
of  infantry.  The  time  which  elapses  between 
that  moment  when  the  artillery  ceases  firing  in 
order  to  allow  the  infantry  to  mount  the  crest, 
was  always  sufficiently  long  to  allow  the  Boers 
to  reoccupy  the  trenches. 

Before  the  Battle  of  Pieter's  Hill,  the  West 
Yorks  asked  the  artillery  to  continue  to  play 
upon  the  crest  they  were  to  storm  up  to  the 
very  last  moment.  The  artillery  obliged  them 
so  enthusiastically  that  several  of  the  West 
Yorks  were  wounded  ;  but  still,  in  spite  of  the 
terrific  bombardment,  many  of  the  Boers  were 
found  in  the  trenches,  and  had  to  be  taken  by 
the  bayonet. 


47 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    RELIEF    OF    LADYSMITH 

AFTER  the  defeat  of  the  Boers  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Pieter's  Hill,  on  February  27th,  or 
Majuba  day,  there  were  two  things  left  for 
them  to  do.  They  could  fall  back  across  a 
great  plain  which  stretched  from  Pieter's  Hill 
to  Bulwana  Mountain,  and  there  make  their 
last  stand  against  Duller  and  the  Ladysmith 
relief  column,  or  they  could  abandon  the  siege 
of  Ladysmith  and  slip  away  after  having  held 
Duller  at  bay  for  three  months. 

Dulwana  Mountain  is  shaped  like  a  brick 
and  set  on  the  side,  blocking  the  valley  in 
which  Ladysmith  lies.  The  railroad  track  slips 
around  one  end  of  the  brick,  and  the  Dun- 
dee trail  around  the  other.  It  was  on  this 
mountain  that  the  Doers  had  placed  their  fa- 
mous gun,  Long  Tom,  with  which  they  began 
the    bombardment    of     Ladysmith,    and    with 

which  up  to  the  day  before  Ladysmith  was  re- 

48 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

lieved,  they  had  thrown  3,000  shells  into  that 
miserable  town. 

If  the  Boers  on  retreating  from  Pieter's  Hill 
had  fortified  this  mountain  with  the  purpose  of 
holding  off  Duller  for  a  still  longer  time,  they 
would  have  been  under  a  fire  from  General 
White's  artillery  in  the  town  behind  them  and 
from  Buller's  naval  guns  in  front.  Their  posi- 
tion would  not  have  been  unlike  that  of  Hump- 
ty  Dumpty  on  the  wall,  so  they  wisely  adopted 
the  only  alternative  and  slipped  aw^ay.  This 
was  on  Tuesday  night,  while  the  British  were 
hurrying  up  artillery  to  hold  the  hills  they  had 
taken  that  afternoon. 

By  ten  o'clock  the  following  morning  from 
the  top  of  Pieter's  Hill  you  could  still  see  the 
Boers  moving  off  along  the  Dundee  road.  It 
was  an  easy  matter  to  follow  them,  for  the  dust 
hung  above  the  trail  in  a  yellow  cloud,  like  mist 
over  a  swamp.  There  were  two  opinions  as  to 
whether  they  were  halting  at  Bulwana  or  pass- 
ing it,  on  their  way  to  Laing's  Neck.  If  they 
were  going  only  to  Bulwana  there  was  the 
probability  of  two  weeks'  more  fighting  before 
they  could  be  dislodged.  If  they  had  avoided 
Bulwana,  the  way  to  Ladysmith  was  open. 

49 


WITH   BOTH    ARMIES 

Lord  Dundonald,  who  is  in  command  of  a 
brigade  of  irregular  cavalry,  was  scouting  to 
the  left  of  Bulwana,  far  in  advance  of  our 
forces.  At  sunset  he  arrived,  without  having 
encountered  the  Boers,  at  the  base  of  Bulwana. 
He  could  either  return  and  report  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  enemy  or  he  could  make  a 
dash  for  it  and  enter  Ladysmith.  His  orders 
were  ''  to  go,  look,  see,"  and  avoid  an  action, 
and  the  fact  that  none  of  his  brigade  was  in  the 
triumphant  procession  which  took  place  three 
days  later  has  led  many  to  think  that  in  en- 
tering the  besieged  town  without  orders  he 
offended  the  commanding  General.  In  any 
event,  it  is  a  family  row  and  of  no  interest  to 
the  outsider.  The  main  fact  is  that  he  did 
make  a  dash  for  it,  and  just  at  sunset  found 
himself  with  two  hundred  men  only  a  mile  from 
the  '*  Doomed  City."  His  force  was  composed 
of  Natal  Carbiniers  and  Imperial  Light  Horse. 
He  halted  them,  and  in  order  that  honors  might 
be  even,  formed  them  in  sections  with  the  half 
sections  made  up  from  each  of  the  two  organ- 
izations. All  the  officers  were  placed  in  front, 
and  with  a  cheer  they  started  to  race  across  the 

plain. 

50 


The  Balloon  at  Ladysmith. 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

The  wig-waggers  on  Convent  Hill  had  al- 
ready seen  them,  and  the  townspeople  and  the 
garrison  were  rushing  through  the  streets  to 
meet  them,  cheering  and  shouting,  and  some 
of  them  weeping.  Others,  so  officers  tell  me, 
who  were  in  the  different  camps,  looked  down 
upon  the  figures  galloping  across  the  plain  in 
the  twilight,  and  continued  making  tea. 

Just  as  they  had  reached  the  centre  of  the 
town,  General  Sir  George  White  and  his  staff 
rode  down  from  head-quarters  and  met  the  men 
whose  coming  meant  for  him  life  and  peace  and 
success.  They  were  advancing  at  a  walk,  with 
the  cheering  people  hanging  to  their  stirrups, 
clutching  at  their  hands  and  hanging  to  the 
bridles  of  their  horses. 

General  White's  first  greeting  was  character- 
istically unselfish  and  loyal,  and  typical  of  the 
British  officer.  He  gave  no  sign  of  his  own 
incalculable  relief,  nor  did  he  give  to  Caesar  the 
things  which  were  Caesar's.  He  did  not  cheer 
Dundonald,  nor  Buller,  nor  the  column  which 
had  rescued  him  and  his  garrison  from  present 
starvation  and  probable  imprisonment  at  Pre- 
toria. He  raised  his  helmet  and  cried,  ''We 
will  give  three  cheers  for  the  Queen  !  "     And 

51 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

then  the  General  and  the  healthy  ragged  and 
sunburned  troopers  from  the  outside  world, 
the  starved,  fever -ridden  garrison  and  the 
starved,  fever-ridden  civilians  stood  with  hats 
off  and  sang  their  national  anthem. 

The  column  outside  had  been  fighting  stead- 
ily for  six  weeks  to  get  Dundonald  or  any  one 
of  its  force  into  Ladysmith  ;  for  fourteen  days 
it  had  been  living  in  the  open,  fighting  by  night 
as  well  as  by  day,  without  halt  or  respite  ;  the 
garrison  inside  had  been  for  four  months  hold- 
ing the  enemy  at  bay  with  the  point  of  the 
bayonet ;  it  was  famished  for  food,  it  was  rot- 
ten with  fever,  and  yet  when  the  relief  came 
and  all  turned  out  well,  the  first  thought  of 
everyone  was  for  the  Queen  ! 

It  may  be  credulous  in  them  or  old  fash- 
ioned, but  it  is  certainly  very  unselfish,  and 
w^hen  you  take  their  point  of  view  it  is  cer- 
tainly very  fine. 

After  the  Queen  everyone  else  had  his  share 
of  the  cheering,  and  General  White  could  not 
complain  of  the  heartiness  with  which  they 
greeted  him.  He  tried  to  make  a  speech  in 
reply,  but  it  was  a  brief  one.  He  spoke  of 
how  much  they  ov/ed  to  General   Duller  and 

52 


THE   RELIEF  OF   LADYSMITH 

his  column,  and  he  congratulated  his  own  sol- 
diers on  the  defence  they  had  made.     - 

**  I  am  very  sorry,  men,"  he  said,  "  that  I  had 
to  cut  down  your  rations.  I — I  promise  you 
I  won't  do  it  again." 

Then  he  stopped  very  suddenly  and  whirled 
his  horse's  head  around  and  rode  away.  Judg- 
ing from  the  number  of  times  they  told  me  of 
this,  the  fact  that  they  had  all  but  seen  an  Eng- 
lish General  give  way  to  his  feelings  seemed  to 
have  impressed  the  civilian  mind  of  Ladysmith 
more  than  the  entrance  of  the  relief  force.  The 
men  having  come  in  and  demonstrated  that  the 
way  was  open,  rode  forth  again,  and  the  relief 
of  Ladysmith  had  taken  place.  But  it  is  not 
the  people  cheering  in  the  dark  streets,  nor 
General  White  breaking  down  in  his  speech  of 
welcome,  which  gives  the  note  to  the  way  the 
men  of  Ladysmith  received  their  freedom.  It 
is  rather  the  fact  that  as  the  two  hundred  bat- 
tle-stained and  earth-stained  troopers  galloped 
forward,  racing  to  be  the  first,  and  rising  in 
their  stirrups  to  cheer,  the  men  in  the  hos- 
pital-camps said,  "  Well,  they're  come  at  last, 
have  they  ?  "  and  continued  fussing  over  their 
fourth  of  a  ration  of  tea.     That  gives  the  real 

53 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

picture  of  how  Ladysmith  came  into  her  inher* 
itance,  and  of  how  she  received  her  rescuers. 

One  cannot  expect  an  entombed  miner  to  be 
as  demonstrative  over  his  relief  as  are  the  men 
who  come  to  his  rescue.  He  has  been  living 
on  the  ends  of  candles,  and  drinking  the  black 
water  in  the  crevices  of  the  coal.  He  is  starved, 
choked  with  fire-damp,  bruised  in  body,  living 
with  his  mouth  to  some  fissure  for  a  whiff  of 
free  air.  The  men  coming  to  his  release  are 
the  picked  men  of  the  mine,  vigorous,  eager, 
filled  with  the  strength  of  their  purpose,  work- 
ing in  desperate  half-hour  shifts,  hacking, 
crushing,  pulling  down,  cheered  as  they  descend 
by  the  crowd  at  the  pit's  mouth,  cheered  again 
and  cared  for  as  they  are  drawn  up  in  the 
basket,  exhausted  and  breathless.  They  are  in- 
spired by  the  fact  that  they  are  fighting  and 
racing  with  death,  but  the  man  lying  impris- 
oned under  the  timbers  hears  the  blows  of  their 
picks  dully,  he  has  ceased  to  feel  or  to  care. 
And  at  last,  when  the  pick's  point  breaks 
through  the  wall  of  his  tomb,  it  is  not  the  man 
lying  exhausted  at  the  bottom  of  the  shaft  who 
rejoices,  but  it  is  the  men  who  have  saved  him 
who  shout  and  cheer. 

54 


THE    RELIEF    OF   LADYSMITH 

On  the  morning  after  Dundonald  had  ridden 
in  and  out  of  Ladysmith,  two  other  corre- 
spondents and  myself  started  to  relieve  it  on 
our  own  account.  We  did  not  know  the  way  to 
Ladysmith,  and  we  did  not  then  know  whether 
or  not  the  Boers  still  occupied  Bulwana  Moun- 
tain. But  by  following  the  railroad  track,  we 
were  sure  of  a  reliable  guide,  and  we  argued 
that  the  chances  of  the  Boers  having  raised  the 
siege  were  so  good  that  it  was  worth  risking 
their  not  having  done  so,  and  being  taken 
prisoner. 

We  carried  all  the  tobacco  we  could  pack  in 
our  saddle-bags,  and  enough  food  for  one  day. 
My  chief  regret  was  that  my  government,  with 
true  republican  simplicity,  had  given  me  a  pass- 
port, typewritten  on  a  modest  sheet  of  note- 
paper  and  wofully  lacking  in  impressive  seals 
and  coats-of-arms.  I  fancied  it  would  look  to 
Boer  eyes  like  one  I  might  have  forged  for 
myself*  in  the  writing-room  of  the  hotel  at 
Cape  Town. 

We  had  ridden  up  Pieter's  Hill  and  scram- 
bled down  on  its  other  side  before  we  learned 
that  Dundonald  had  raised  the  siege  himself. 
We  learned  this  from  long  trains  of  artillery 

55 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

and  regiments  of  infantry  which  already  were 
moving  forward  over  the  great  plain  which  lies 
between  Pieter's  and  Bulwana.  We  learned  it 
also  from  the  silence  of  conscientious,  dutiful 
correspondents,  who  came  galloping  back  as 
we  galloped  forward,  and  who  made  wide  de- 
tours at  sight  of  us,  or  who,  when  we  hailed 
them,  lashed  their  ponies  over  the  red  rocks 
and  pretended  not  to  hear.  They  were  unself- 
ishly turning  their  backs  on  Ladysmith  in  or- 
der to  send  the  first  news  to  the  paper  of  the 
fact  that  the  **  Doomed  City"  was  relieved. 
This  would  enable  one  paper  to  say  that  it  had 
the  news  "  on  the  street "  five  minutes  earlier 
than  its  hated  rivals.  We  found  that  the  ri- 
valry of  our  respective  papers  bored  us  exceed- 
ingly. We  condemned  it  as  being  childish  and 
weak  of  them.  London,  New  York,  Chicago, 
were  only  names,  they  were  places  thousands 
of  leagues  away  :  Ladysmith  was  just  across 
that  mountain.  If  our  horses  held  out  at  the 
pace,  we  would  be — after  Dundonald — the  first 
men  in.  We  imagined  that  we  would  see  hys- 
terical women  and  starving  men.  They  would 
wring  our  hands,  and  say,  *'  God  bless  you,"  and 
we  would    halt   our   steaming    horses   in   the 

56 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

Market-place,  and  distribute  the  news  of  the 
outside  world,  and  tobacco.  There  would  be 
shattered  houses,  roofless  homes,  deep  pits  in 
the  roadways  where  the  shells  had  burst  and 
buried  themselves.  We  would  see  the  en- 
tombed miner  at  the  moment  of  his  deliver- 
ance, we  would  be  among  the  first  from  the 
outer  world  to  break  the  spell  of  his  silence ; 
the  first  to  receive  the  brunt  of  the  imprisoned 
people's  gratitude  and  rejoicings. 

Indeed,  it  was  clearly  our  duty  to  the  papers 
that  employed  us  that  we  should  not  send  them 
news,  but  that  we  should  be  the  first  to  enter 
Ladysmith.  We  were  surely  the  best  judges 
of  what  was  best  to  do.  How  like  them  to  try 
to  dictate  to  us  from  London  and  New  York, 
when  we  were  on  the  spot.  It  was  absurd. 
We  shouted  this  to  each  other  as  we  raced  in 
and  out  of  the  long  confused  column,  lashing 
viciously  with  our  whips.  We  stumbled  around 
pieces  of  artillery,  slid  in  between  dripping 
water-carts,  dodged  the  horns  of  weary  oxen, 
scattered  companies  of  straggling  Tommies, 
and  ducked  under  protruding  tent-poles  on  the 
baggage-wagons,  and  at  last  came  out  together 
again  in  advance  of  the  dusty  column. 

57 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

'*  Besides,  we  don't  know  where  the  press- 
censor  is,  do  we  ?"  No,  of  course  we  had  no 
idea  where  the  press-censor  was,  and  unless  he 
said  that  Ladysmith  was  relieved,  the  fact  that 
25,000  other  soldiers  said  so  counted  for  idle 
gossip.  Our  papers  could  not  expect  us  to  go 
riding  over  mountains  the  day  Ladysmith  was 
relieved,  hunting  for  a  press-censor.  *'  That 
press-censor,"  gasped  Hartland,  '*  never — is — 
where  he — ought  to  be."  The  words  were 
bumped  out  of  him  as  he  was  shot  up  and 
down  in  the  saddle.  That  was  it.  It  was  the 
press-censor's  fault.  Our  consciences  were 
clear  now.  If  our  papers  worried  themselves 
or  us  because  they  did  not  receive  the  great 
news  until  everyone  else  knew  of  it,  it  was  all 
because  of  that  press-censor.  We  smiled  again 
and  spurred  the  horses  forward.  We  abused 
the  press-censor  roundly — we  were  extremely 
indignant  with  him.  It  was  so  like  him  to  go 
off  and  lose  himself  on  the  day  Ladysmith  was 
relieved.  ''  Confound  him,"  we  muttered,  and 
grinned  guiltily.  We  felt  as  we  used  to  feel 
when  we  were  playing  truant  from  school. 

We  were  ncaring  Pieter's  Station  now,  and 

were  half  way  to  Ladysmith.     But  the  van  of 

58 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

the  army  was  still  about  us.  Was  it  possible 
that  it  stretched  already  into  the  beleaguered 
city  ?  Were  we,  after  all,  to  be  cheated  of  the 
first  and  freshest  impressions  ?  The  tall  lancers 
turned  at  the  sound  of  the  horses'  hoofs  and 
stared,  infantry  officers  on  foot  smiled  up  at  us 
sadly,  they  were  dirty  and  dusty  and  sweating, 
they  carried  rifles  and  cross  belts  like  the  Tom- 
mies, and  they  knew  that  we  outsiders  who 
were  not  under  orders  would  see  the  chosen 
city  before  them.  Some  of  them  shouted  to 
us,  but  we  only  nodded  and  galloped  on.  We 
wanted  to  get  rid  of  them  all,  but  they  were 
interminable.  When  we  thought  we  had 
shaken  them  off,  and  that  we  were  at  last  in 
advance,  we  would  come  upon  a  group  of 
them  resting  on  the  same  ground  their  shells 
had  torn  up  during  the  battle  the  day  before. 

We  passed  Boer  laagers  marked  by  empty 
cans  and  broken  saddles  and  black  cold  camp- 
fires.  At  Pieter's  Station  the  blood  was  still 
fresh  on  the  grass  where  two  hours  before  some 
of  the  South  African  Light  Horse  had  been 
wounded  and  their  horses  stampeded. 

The  Boers  were  still  on  Bulwana  then  ?  Per- 
haps, after  all,  we  had  better  turn  back  and  try 

59 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

to  find  that  press-censor.  But  we  rode  on  and 
saw  Pieter's  Station,  as  we  passed  it,  as  an  ab- 
surd relic  of  bygone  days  when  bridges  were 
intact  and  trains  ran  on  schedule  time.  One 
door  seen  over  the  shoulder  as  we  galloped 
past  read,  '*  Station  Master's  Office — Private," 
and  in  contempt  of  that  stern  injunction,  which 
would  make  even  the  first-class  passenger  hesi- 
tate, one  of  our  shells  had  knocked  away  the 
half  of  the  door  and  made  its  privacy  a  mock- 
ery. We  had  only  to  follow  the  track  now 
and  we  would  arrive  in  time — unless  the  Boers 
were  still  on  Bulwana.  We  had  shaken  off  the 
army,  and  we  were  two  miles  in  front  of  it, 
when  six  men  came  galloping  toward  us  in  an 
unfamiliar  uniform.  They  passed  us  far  to  the 
right,  regardless  of  the  trail,  and  galloping 
through  the  high  grass.  We  pulled  up  when 
we  saw  them,  for  they  had  green  facings  to 
their  gray  uniforms,  and  no  one  with  Buller's 
column  wore  green  facings. 

We  gave  a  yell  in  chorus.  "  Are  you  from 
Ladysmith  ?  "  we  shouted.  The  men,  before 
they  answered,  wheeled  and  cheered,  and  came 
toward  us  laughing  jubilant.     *'  We're  the  first 

men  out,"   cried   the   officer,   and  we  rode  in 

60 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

among  them,  shaking  hands  and  offering  our 
good  wishes.  *'  We're  glad  to  see  you,"  we 
said.  '*  We're  glad  to  see  you,''  they  said.  It 
was  not  an  original  greeting,  but  it  seemed 
sufficient  to  all  of  us.  "  Are  the  Boers  on  Bul- 
wana  ?  "  we  asked.  **  No,  they've  trekked  up 
Dundee  way.  They  took  Long  Tom  down 
yesterday.     You  can  go  right  in." 

We  parted  at  the  word  and  started  to  go 
right  in.  We  found  the  culverts  along  the 
railroad  cut  away  and  the  bridges  down,  and 
that  galloping  ponies  over  the  roadbed  of  a 
railroad  is  a  difficult  feat  at  the  best,  even 
when  the  road  is  in  working  order. 

Some  men,  cleanly  dressed  and  rather  pale- 
looking,  met  us  and  said  :  ''  Good-morning." 
"  Are  you  from  Ladysmith  ?"  we  called.  '*  No, 
we're  from  the  neutral  camp,"  they  answered. 
We  were  the  first  men  from  outside  they  had 
seen  in  four  months,  and  that  was  the  extent 
of  their  interest  or  information.  They  had  put 
on  their  best  clothes,  and  were  walking  along 
the  track  to  Colenso  to  catch  a  train  south  to 
Durban  or  to  Maritzburg,  to  any  place  out  of 
the  neutral  camp.  They  might  have  been  som- 
nambulists for  all  they  saw  of  us,  or  of  the 

6i 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

Boer  trenches  and  the  battle-field  before  them. 
But  we  found  them  of  greatest  interest,  espe- 
cially their  clean  clothes.  Our  column  had  not 
seen  clean  linen  in  six  weeks,  and  the  sight  of 
these  civilians  in  white  duck  and  straw  hats, 
and  carrying  walking-sticks,  coming  toward  us 
over  the  railroad  ties,  made  one  think  it  was 
Sunday  at  home,  and  these  were  excursionists 
to  the  suburbs. 

We  came  under  the  shadow  of  Bulwana  with 
a  certain  sense  of  awe  at  its  mere  name.  Even 
though  abandoned,  it  seemed  to  possess  the 
terrors  of  a  fortress,  deserted,  but  still  grim  and 
menacing.  Its  base  was  an  eruption  of  trenches, 
a  ploughed  field  in  which  each  furrow  ran  at  a 
tangent.  Below  these  trenches  swept  the  Klip 
River,  a  swift  khaki-colored  stream,  which  at 
the  base  of  Bulwana  was  thrown  sharply  from 
its  course  by  hundreds  of  fat  sacks  of  earth, 
packed  tightly  and  built  up  solidly  into  a  mam- 
moth dam.  Work  on  this  dam  had  been  given 
up  at  an  instant's  warning.  Thousands  of  the 
empty  sacks  lay  on  the  bank  in  carefully  ar- 
ranged heaps.  Others,  already  half  filled,  were 
standing  in  rows  along  the  track,  and  the  spades 

which  had  been  used  to  fill  them  still  stuck  up- 

62 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

right  in  the  earth.  The  place  looked  as  though 
the  noonday  whistle  had  just  sounded,  and  the 
workmen  had  betaken  themselves  and  their 
dinner-pails  to  the  shade  of  the  nearest  trees. 

We  had  been  riding  through  a  roofless  tunnel, 
with  the  mountain  and  the  great  dam  on  one 
side,  and  the  high  wall  of  the  railway  cutting 
on  the  other,  but  now  just  ahead  of  us  lay  the 
open  country,  and  the  exit  of  the  tunnel  barri- 
caded by  twisted  rails  and  heaped-up  ties  and 
bags  of  earth.  It  was  our  last  obstacle,  for  as 
we  rode  around  it  into  the  river-bushes  we  came 
out  into  the  plain  and  left  Bulwana  behind  us. 
For  eight  miles  it  had  shut  out  the  sight  of  our 
goal,  but  now,  directly  in  front  of  us,  was 
spread  a  great  city  of  dirty  tents  and  grass  huts 
and  Red  Cross  flags — the  neutral  camp — and 
beyond  that,  four  miles  away,  shimmering  and 
twinkling  sleepily  in  the  sun,  the  white  walls 
and  zinc  roofs  of  Ladysmith. 

We  gave  a  gasp  of  recognition  and  galloped 
into  and  through  the  neutral  camp.  Natives 
of  India  in  great  turbans,  Indian  women  in 
gay  shawls  and  nose-rings,  and  black  Kaffirs  in 
discarded  khaki,  looked  up  at  us  dully  from  the 
earth  floors  of  their  huts,  and  when  we  shouted 

63 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

**  Which  way  ?  "  and  ''  Where  is  the  bridge  ?  " 
only  stared,  or  pointed  vaguely,  still  staring. 

After  all,  we  thought,  they  are  poor  creatures, 
incapable  of  emotion.  Perhaps  they  do  not 
know  how  glad  we  are  that  they  have  been 
rescued.  They  do  not  understand  that  we  want 
to  shake  hands  with  everybody  and  offer  our 
congratulations.  Wait  until  we  meet  our  own 
people,  we  said,  they  will  understand  !  It  was 
such  a  pleasant  prospect  that  we  whipped  the 
unhappy  ponies  into  greater  bursts  of  speed, 
not  because  they  needed  it,  but  because  we 
were  too  excited  and  impatient  to  sit  motion- 
less. For  the  last  two  hours  they  had  known 
that  something  extraordinary  was  going  for- 
ward, else  why  had  they  been  led  across  open 
trellis-work  bridges,  and  jumped  down  ravines, 
and  kept  at  a  gallop,  while  the  rest  of  the  army 
was  crawling  on  at  a  walk?  They,  who  at 
other  times  had  to  be  beaten  out  of  a  walk, 
now  scorned  to  trot ;  a  gallop  had  become  their 
natural  gait. 

In  our  haste  we  lost  our  way  among  innu- 
merable little  trees ;  we  disagreed  as  to  which 
one  of  the  many  cross-trails  led  home  to  the 
bridge.      We  slipped  out  of  our  stirrups  to  drag 

64 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

the  ponies  over  one  steep  place,  and  to  haul 
them  up  another,  and  at  last  the  right  road  lay- 
before  us,  and  a  hundred  yards  ahead  a  short 
iron  bridge  and  a  Gordon  Highlander  waited 
to  welcome  us,  to  receive  our  first  greetings  and 
an  assorted  collection  of  cigarettes.  Hartland 
was  riding  a  thoroughbred  polo  pony  and  passed 
the  gallant  defender  of  Ladysmith  without  a 
kind  look  or  word,  but  Blackwood  and  I  gal- 
loped up  more  decorously,  smiling  at  him  with 
good-will.  The  soldier,  who  had  not  seen  a 
friend  from  the  outside  world  in  four  months, 
leaped  in  front  of  us  and  presented  a  heavy  gun 
and  a  burnished  bayonet. 

"  Halt,  there,"  he  cried.  ''  Where's  your 
pass  ?  " 

Of  course  it  showed  excellent  discipline — we 
admired  it  immensely.  We  even  overlooked 
the  fact  that  he  should  think  Boer  spies  would 
enter  the  town  by  way  of  the  main  bridge  and 
at  a  gallop.  We  liked  his  vigilance,  we  ad- 
mired his  discipline,  but  in  spite  of  that  his 
reception  chilled  us.  We  had  brought  several 
things  with  us  that  we  thought  they  might 
possibly  want  in  Ladysmith,  but  we  had  en- 
tirely forgotten  to   bring  a  pass.     Indeed  I  do 

65 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

not  believe  one  of  the  twenty-five  thousand 
men  who  had  been  fighting  for  six  weeks  to 
relieve  Ladysmith  had  supplied  himself  with 
one.  The  night  before,  when  the  Ladysmith 
sentries  had  tried  to  halt  Dundonald's  troopers 
in  the  same  way,  and  demanded  a  pass  from 
them,  there  was  not  one  in  the  squadron. 

We  crossed  the  bridge  soberly  and  entered 
Ladysmith  at  a  walk.  Even  the  ponies  looked 
disconcerted  and  crestfallen.  After  the  high 
grass  and  the  mountains  of  red  rock,  where 
there  was  not  even  a  tent  to  remind  one  of  a 
roof-tree,  the  stone  cottages  and  shop  windows 
and  chapels  and  well-ordered  hedges  of  the  main 
street  of  Ladysmith  made  it  seem  a  wealthy 
and  attractive  suburb.  When  we  entered,  a 
Sabbath-like  calm  hung  upon  the  town  ;  officers 
in  the  smartest  khaki  and  glistening  Stowassers 
observed  us  askance,  little  girls  in  white  pina- 
fores passed  us  with  eyes  cast  down,  a  man  on 
a  bicycle  looked  up,  and  then,  in  terror  lest  we 
might  speak  to  him,  glued  his  eyes  to  the  wheel 
and  "  scorched  "  rapidly.  We  trotted  forward 
and  halted  at  each  street-crossing,  looking  to 
the  right  and  left  in  the  hope  that  someone 
might  nod  to  us.     From  the  opposite  end  of 

66 


23 


o 

> 


23 


cy; 


ix 


a 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

the  town  General  Duller  and  his  staff  came 
toward  us  slowly — the  house-tops  did  not  seem 
to  sway — it  was  not  ''roses,  roses  all  the  way." 
The  German  army  marching  into  Paris  received 
as  hearty  a  welcome.  "  Why  didn't  you  people 
cheer  General  BuUer  when  he  came  in  ?  "  we 
asked  later.  "Oh,  was  that  General  Buller?" 
they  inquired.  ''We  didn't  recognize  him." 
"  But  you  knew  he  was  a  general  officer,  you 
knew  he  was  the  first  of  the  relieving  column  ?  " 
"  Ye-es,  but  we  didn't  know  who  he  was." 

I  decided  that  the  bare  fact  of  the  relief  of 
Ladysmith  was  all  I  would  be  able  to  wire  to 
my  neglected  paper,  and  with  remorse  started 
to  find  the  Ladysmith  censor.  Two  officers, 
with  whom  I  ventured  to  break  the  hush  that 
hung  upon  the  town  by  asking  my  way,  said 
they  were  going  in  the  direction  of  the  censor. 
W^e  rode  for  some  distance  in  guarded  silence. 
Finally,  one  of  them,  with  an  inward  struggle, 
brought  himself  to  ask,  "  Are  you  from  the 
outside  ?  " 

I  was  forced  to  admit  that  I  was.  I  felt 
that  I  had  taken  an  unwarrantable  liberty  in 
intruding  on  a  besieged  garrison.  I  wanted  to 
say  that  I   had  lost  my  way  and   had  ridden 

67 


WITH   BOTH  ARMIES 

into  the  town  by  mistake,  and  that  I  begged  to 
be  allowed  to  withdraw  with  apologies.  The 
other  officer  woke  up  suddenly  and  handed  me 
a  printed  list  of  the  prices  which  had  been 
paid  during  the  siege  for  food  and  tobacco. 
He  seemed  to  offer  it  as  being  in  some  way 
an  official  apology  for  his  starved  appearance. 
The  price  of  cigars  struck  me  as  especially  pa- 
thetic, and  I  commented  on  it.  The  first  offi- 
cer gazed  mournfully  at  the  blazing  sunshine 
before  him  ;  ''  I  have  not  smoked  a  cigar  in 
two  months,"  he  said.  My  surging  sympathy, 
and  my  terror  at  again  offending  the  haughty 
garrison,  combated  so  fiercely  that  it  was  only 
with  a  great  effort  that  I  produced  a  handful. 
"Will  you  have  these?"  The  other  officer 
started  in  his  saddle  so  violently  that  I  thought 
his  horse  had  stumbled,  but  he  also  kept  his 
eyes  straight  in  front.  '*  Thank  you,  I  will 
take  one  if  I  may — just  one,"  said  the  first 
officer.  ''  Are  you  sure  I  am  not  robbing 
you?"  They  each  took  one,  but  they  refused 
to  put  the  rest  of  the  cigars  in  their  pockets. 
As  the  printed  list  stated  that  a  dozen  matches 
sold  for  $1.75,  I  handed  them  a  box  of 
matches.       Then   a  beautiful  thing  happened. 

68 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

They  lit  the  cigars  and  at  the  first  taste  of  the 
smoke — and  they  were  not  good  cigars — an 
almost  human  expression  of  peace  and  good- 
will and  utter  abandonment  to  joy  spread  over 
their  yellow  skins  and  cracked  lips  and  fever- 
lit  eyes.  The  first  man  dropped  his  reins  and 
put  his  hands  on  his  hips  and  threw  back  his 
head  and  shoulders  and  closed  his  eyelids.  I 
felt  that  I  had  intruded  at  a  moment  which 
should  have  been  left  sacred. 

Another  boy-officer  in  stainless  khaki  and 
beautifully  turned  out,  polished  and  burnished 
and  varnished,  but  with  the  same  yellow  skin 
and  sharpened  cheek-bones  and  protruding 
teeth,  a  skeleton  on  horse-back,  rode  slowly 
toward  us  down  the  hill.  As  he  reached  us 
he  glanced  up  and  then  swayed  in  his  saddle, 
gazing  at  my  companions  fearfully.  **Good 
God,"  he  cried.  His  brother-officers  seemed 
to  understand,  but  made  no  answer,  except  to 
jerk  their  heads  toward  me.  They  were  too 
occupied  to  speak.  I  handed  the  skeleton  a 
cigar,  and  he  took  it  in  great  embarrassment, 
laughing  and  stammering  and  blushing.  Then 
I  began  to  understand  ;  I  began  to  appreciate 

the  heroic  self-sacrifice  of  the  first  two,  who, 

69 


[Price  List  During  the  Siege'\ 

I  B  S  E 


OF 


T^  i^iDir  ^i^nn:  la:. 


189&~1900. 


q£  certify  thdt  tke  following,  wre 
6h/&  oorreot  wnd  ?i/iyk&st  prio&s  r&O/lised 
cvt  7)V7/  so/l&s  iy  f^uilio  Q^uoUorv  during 


tk&  diove  Si&ffe._ 


JOE  DYSON, 


<i^uoHon6&r. 


Ladysmith, 

February  21s/,    1900. 

70 


14  fes.  Oatmeal 
Condensed  Milk,  per  tin 
I  fc.  Beef  Fat 

1  lb.  Tin  Coffee 

2  lb.  Tin  Tongue 
I  Sucking  Pig 
Eggs,  per  dozen 
Fowls,  each 
4  Small  Cucumbers 
Green  Mealies,  each 
Small  plate  Grapes 

I  Small  plate  Apples 
I  Plate  Tomatoes  ... 
I  Vegetable  Marrow 
I  Plate  Eschalots  ... 
I  Plate  Potatoes    ... 

3  Small  bunches  Carrots 
I  Glass  Jelly 

I  jb.  Bottle  Jam 

I  lb.  Tin  Marmalade 

I  dozen  Matches    ... 

I  pkt.  Cigarettes    ... 

50  Cigars 

J-Ib.  Cake  "  Fair  Maid  "  Tobacco 

J-Ib.  Cake  **  Fair   Maid  " 

I  lb.  Sailors  Tobacco 

J-lb.  tin  '•  Capstan"  Navy  Cut  Tobacco 


c 

2 

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19 

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71 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

when  they  had  been  given  the  chance,  had  re- 
fused to  fill  their  pockets.  I  knew  then  that 
it  was  an  effort  worthy  of  the  V.  C. 

The  censor  was  at  his  post,  and  a  few  min- 
utes later  a  signal  officer  on  Convent  Hill 
heliographed  my  cable  to  Bulvvana,  where,  six 
hours  after  the  Boers  had  abandoned  it,  Bul- 
ler's  own  helios  bad  begun  to  dance,  and  they 
speeded  the  cable  on  its  long  journey  to  the 
newspaper  office  on  the  Thames  Embankment. 

When  one  descended  to  the  streets  again — 
there  are  only  two  streets  which  run  the  full 
length  of  the  town — and  looked  for  signs  of 
the  siege,  one  found  them  not  in  the  shattered 
houses,  of  which  there  seemed  surprisingly 
few,  but  in  the  starved  and  fever-shaken  look 
of  the  people. 

The  cloak  of  indifference  which  every  Eng- 
lishman wears,  and  his  instinctive  dislike  to 
make  much  of  his  feelings,  and,  in  this  case, 
his  pluck,  at  first  concealed  from  us  how  terri- 
bly those  who  had  been  inside  of  Ladysmith 
had  suffered,  and  how  near  to  the  breaking 
point  they  were.  Their  faces  were  the  real 
index  to  what  they  had  passed  through. 

Anyone  who    had  seen   our  men  at   Mon- 

72 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

tauk  Point  or  in  the  fever-camp  at  Siboney 
needed  no  hospital-list  to  tell  him  of  the  piti- 
ful condition  of  the  garrison.  The  skin  on 
their  faces  was  yellow,  and  drawn  sharply  over 
the  brow  and  cheek-bones ;  their  teeth  pro- 
truded, and  they  shambled  along  like  old  men, 
their  voices  ranging  from  a  feeble  pipe  to  a 
deep  whisper.  In  this  pitiable  condition  they 
had  been  forced  to  keep  night-watch  on  the 
hill-crests,  in  the  rain,  to  lie  in  the  trenches, 
and  to  work  on  fortifications  and  bomb- 
proofs.  And  they  were  expected  to  do  all 
of  these  things  on  what  strength  they  could 
get  from  horse-meat,  biscuits  of  the  tough- 
ness and  composition  of  those  that  are  fed  to 
dogs,  and  on  *'  mealies,"  which  is  what  we  call 
corn. 

The  town  itself  did  not  arouse  one's  sym- 
pathies. It  straggles  for  a  mile  on  either  side 
of  a  wide  dusty  street.  It  consists  of  stone 
and  corrugated-zinc  shops  of  one  story,  a  bare 
parade-ground,  a  court-house  with  a  shattered 
bell-tower,  and  houses,  also  of  one  story  and 
balanced  by  broad  verandas,  set  back  in  gar- 
dens yellow  with  dust.  It  is  an  unlovely,  un- 
homelike  place,  set  when  it  rains  in  a  swamp 

73 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

of  mud,  and  when  the  sun  shines  smothered  in 
a  plague  of  dust.  The  dust  is  so  deep  that  a 
wind  is  not  needed  to  raise  a  cloud,  a  team  of 
oxen  can  do  that,  a  column  of  marching  men. 
When  several  teams  of  oxen  are  kicking  up 
the  dust  at  the  same  time,  it  is  not  safe  to  ride 
faster  than  a  walk  for  fear  of  bumping  into 
some  unseen  obstacle.  For  a  whole  morning 
at  a  time,  when  the  wind  sweeps  down  the 
street,  Ladysmith's  main  avenue  is  a  choking 
yellow  fog,  through  which  you  can  see  but 
twenty  feet  about  you.  And  when  the  dust  is 
settled,  all  that  you  see  is  so  practical,  hard, 
and  ugly,  that  one  almost  wishes  for  the  curtain 
of  dust  to  rise  again  and  hide  it.  On  one  side 
of  the  main  street  the  shops  run  so  close  to- 
gether that  it  is  possible  to  walk  for  over  half 
a  mile  under  the  shelter  of  their  iron  awn- 
ings, and  this  was  the  promenade  and  meeting- 
place  of  the  besieged  people.  Here  the  Tom- 
mies on  leave  from  the  camps  walked  and 
talked — here  the  Indian  coolies  sat  crouched 
on  their  haunches — here  the  civilian  colonials 
met  to  gossip  and  to  abuse  the  relieving  col- 
umn and  the  British  Parliament.  For  Tommy 
and  the  civilian,  but  for  the  excitemeni  of  the 

74 


Shattered  Tower  ot  the  Court  House  at  Ladysmith. 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

shells,  it  must  have  been  a  terrible  and  awful 
experience.  The  town  offered  hem  no  relief, 
no  green  and  pleasant  spot  of  retreat,  nothing 
that  was  fresh,  pretty,  or  restful.  Its  muddy 
Klip  River  ran  between  high  bare  banks, 
tunnelled  with  caves  and  bomb-proofs.  Its 
streets  offered  mud  or  driving  dust,  its  shops 
were  barred  and  shuttered,  public  -  houses 
showed  mockingly  unpolished  bars  and  rows 
of  emptied  bottles,  the  plain  outside  was 
within  the  zone  of  fire,  the  encircling  moun- 
tains suggested  only  comrades  killed  or  com- 
rades killing,  or  the  stronghold  of  the  enemy. 

That  first  day  in  Ladysmith  gave  us  a  faint 
experience  as  to  what  the  siege  meant.  The 
correspondents  had  disposed  of  all  their  to- 
bacco, and  within  an  hour  saw  starvation  star- 
ing them  in  the  face,  and  raced  through  the 
town  to  rob  fellow-correspondents  who  had 
just  arrived.  The  new-comers  in  their  turn 
had  soon  distributed  all  they  owned,  and  came 
tearing  back  to  beg  one  of  their  own  cigarettes. 
We  tried  to  buy  grass  for  our  ponies,  and  were 
met  with  pitying  contempt ;  we  tried  to  buy 
food  for  ourselves,  and  were  met  with  open 
scorn.    I  went  to  the  only  hotel  which  was  open 

75 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

in  the  place,  and  offered  large  sums  for  a  cup 
of  tea. 

**  Put  up  your  money,"  said  the  vScotchman 
in  charge,  sharply.  "  What's  the  good  of  your 
money  ?  Can  your  horse  eat  money  ?  Can 
you  eat  money?  Very  well,  then,  put  it 
away."  The  arrangements  at  this  hotel  were 
that  each  lodger  drew  his  own  rations  from 
the  military,  and  the  hotel  people  cooked  and 
served  them.  It  was  an  interminable  time 
before  the  food  arrived,  and  on  the  second  day 
my  rations  were  four  biscuits  and  an  ounce 
of  tea.  The  other  lodgers  proudly  boasted 
of  having  lived  on  but  one  biscuit  and  a  quar- 
ter a  day,  so  the  arrivals  from  the  outside 
could  not  complain.  On  the  third  day  some 
condensed  milk  arrived,  and  one  man  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  a  can  of  it.  We  watched 
it  trickle  out  into  his  watery  tea  as  though  it 
were  molten  gold.  A  ration  of  ''bully"  beef, 
which  was  too  tough  to  eat,  was  served  to 
everyone,  but  sugar  and  soft  bread  were  con- 
sidered the  greatest  luxuries,  and  the  most  to 
be  desired.  The  fortunate  ones  who  got  these 
used  to  convey  them  to  the  table  in  their  hands 

and,  when  they  had  finished,  carried  away  the 

76 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

little  brown  paper  cones  which  held  the  brown 
sugar,  and  the  broken  crusts  of  bread.  In  the 
lack  of  vegetables  we  drank  the  vinegar  out  of 
the  cruets.  On  the  fifth  day  they  brought  in 
some  flour  and  served  out  the  first  soft  bread 
the  soldiers  had  eaten  in  three  months.  The 
biscuit  which  is  given  the  English  soldier  as  a 
substitute  for  bread  does  not  compare  with  the 
hardtack  served  to  our  army.  I  found  it  ex- 
ceedingly like  dog-biscuit.  On  the  fourth  day 
a  civilian  appeared  with  a  bottle  of  whiskey. 
He  danced  into  the  hotel  with  this,  and  all  the 
other  civilians  who  had  lodged  there  during  the 
siege  charged  upon  him,  and  exhibited  the  first 
signs  of  enthusiasm  they  had  shown.  The  man 
who  had  brought  in  the  bottle  was  most  gen- 
erous, and  gave  us  all  a  drink,  but  before  he 
tasted  his  own  he  said,  apologetically  :  "  I  am 
going  to  drink  this  to  my  mother.  I  promised 
my  mother  that  if  Ladysmith  was  relieved  and 
we  were  all  alive,  I'd  drink  my  first  drink  of 
whiskey  to  her.  So  you'll  excuse  me,  please, 
gentlemen,  if  I  don't  drink  this  to  the  Queen." 
We  were  naturally  shocked  at  his  disloyalty, 
but  as  he  had  been  so  generous,  some  of  us 
forgave  him.    A  week  later  when  the  real  food 

77 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

did  begin  to  come  in,  many  of  the  officers  and 
men  who  were  just  out  of  hospital,  recovering 
from  enteric  fever,  ate  so  much  and  so  hur- 
riedly that  I  was  told  of  as  many  as  sixty  who 
died  of  indigestion. 

The  great  dramatic  moment  after  the  raising 
of  the  siege  was  the  entrance  into  Ladysmith 
of  the  relieving  column.  It  was  a  magnificent, 
manly,  and  moving  spectacle.  Sometimes  it 
is  difficult  to  cheer  the  result  of  a  battle,  for 
the  victory  that  crowns  the  battle  has  carried 
with  it  death  to  many  men,  and  worse  to  the 
women,  whom  it  has  sought  out  and  struck 
through  the  heart  as  far  away  as  Pretoria  and 
London.  As  one  of  our  navy  commanders 
said  when  he  sank  the  Spanish  battle-ship, 
'*  Don't  cheer,  boys,  they  are  drowning."  But 
one  can  cheer  without  hesitation  the  rescue 
of  men,  women,  and  children  from  starvation 
and  fever  and  death,  and  still  have  a  cheer 
left  for  those  who  risked  their  lives  to  save 
them. 

The  arrival  of  the  great  column  was  the  be- 
ginning of  a  love-feast  of  good  feeling  and 
thanksgiving  which  was  celebrated  in  the  main 

street    of    Ladysmith,   and    continued  uproar- 

78 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

iously  and  gloriously  for  three  hours.  Nothing 
was  lacking  but  the  feast. 

At  the  start  it  moved  haltingly,  the  towns- 
people lacking  the  initiative,  and  for  ten  min- 
utes the  column  marched  past  in  as  respectful 
a  silence  as  would  have  greeted  a  funeral. 
General  Buller  alone  received  a  welcoming 
cheer.  The  rest  of  the  men,  "  lance,  foot,  and 
dragoon,"  passed  between  the  lines  of  the  gar- 
rison and  the  townspeople  to  no  other  accom- 
paniment than  the  music  of  the  Gordons'  bag- 
pipes and  the  whirr  of  the  American  biograph. 
This  was  not  due  so  much  to  lack  of  feeling  as 
to  bad  stage-management. 

Sir  George  White,  who  was  to  review  the 
march  past,  sat  his  horse  just  in  front  of  the 
shattered  court-house,  and  directly  opposite  to 
the  bagpipes.  The  result  was  that  the  eyes  of 
the  advancing  Tommies  were  either  so  fasci- 
nated by  the  shell-holes  in  the  tower  of  the 
court-house  that  they  looked  up  over  General 
White's  head,  or  their  ears  were  so  charmed  by 
the  bagpipes  that  they  turned  their  eyes  to- 
ward the  Highlanders,  and  so  passed  General 
White  without  seeing  him.  The  bagpipes  had 
also  a  very  demoralizing  effect  upon  the  horses, 

79 


WITH   BOTH    ARMIES 

so  that  at  the  very  moment  when  the  officers 
should  have  seen  General  White  and  given 
him  a  sweeping  salute,  they  were  so  occupied 
in  controlling  their  startled  steeds  that  they 
also  passed  him  by  without  being  aware  of  his 
presence. 

It  was  Colonel  Donald,  the  Irish  colonel  of 
the  Irish  Fusileers,  who  was  the  first  to  set 
matters  right  and  to  break  the  polite  calm.  He 
saw  General  White  just  as  he  had  ridden  past 
him  and  he  saw  his  mistake  at  the  same  instant, 
and  whirled  about  so  suddenly  that  his  horse 
drove  back  his  own  men.  His  enthusiasm 
made  up  for  the  apathy  of  the  hundreds  who 
had  preceded  him  ;  his  face  shone  with  gener- 
ous, excited  hero-worship.  He  did  not  pause 
to  salute.  It  was  as  though  he  thought  such 
a  perfunctory  tribute  from  himself  alone  was 
inadequate  for  such  an  occasion  and  for  such 
a  man  as  General  White. 

So  he  stood  up  in  his  stirrups  and  waved  his 
helmet  and  called  upon  his  regiment.  ''  Three 
cheers  for  General  Sir  George  White ! "  he 
shouted,  "  Hip,  hip,  hip  !"  in  a  brogue  as  rich 
as  his  good-will  was  generous.  And  his  regi- 
ment answered  to  his  call  as  it  had  done  on 

80 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

many  less  agreeable  moments,  and  the  love- 
feast  began. 

You  must  imagine  what  followed.  You 
must  imagine  the  dry,  burning  heat,  the  fine, 
yellow  dust,  the  white  glare  of  the  sunshine, 
and  in  the  heat  and  glare  and  dust  the  great 
interminable  column  of  men  in  ragged  khaki 
crowding  down  the  main  street,  22,000  strong, 
cheering  and  shouting,  with  the  sweat  running 
off  their  red  faces  and  cutting  little  rivulets 
in  the  dust  that  caked  their  cheeks.  Some  of 
them  were  so  glad  that,  though  in  the  heaviest 
marching  order,  they  leaped  up  and  down  and 
stepped  out  of  line  to  dance  to  the  music  of 
the  bagpipes.  For  hours  they  crowded  past, 
laughing,  joking,  and  cheering,  or  staring 
ahead  of  them,  with  lips  wide  apart,  panting  in 
the  heat  and  choking  with  the  dust,  but  always 
ready  to  turn  again  and  wave  their  helmets  at 
the  General. 

Every  component  part  of  an  army  in  being 
unrolled  before  us  :  the  rumbling  cannon,  like 
great  insects,  caked  with  mud,  the  drivers  salut- 
ing with  their  whips  reversed ;  the  lancers  with 
naked  spear-points  from  which    the    pennons 

had  long  since  been  plucked  away;  the  Indian 

81 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

coolies,  veterans  of  many  hill-fights  in  Mala- 
kand,  guarding  the  ammunition-train  and  sur- 
veying their  joyous  comrades  with  unmoved, 
undated,  almost  scornful  eyes;  the  infantry, 
burdened  with  musket,  pack,  ammunition- 
pouches,  pots,  pans,  and  precious  faggots  of 
kindling  wood,  but  without  colonels,  com- 
manded by  captains,  some  of  them  with  only 
five  of  the  twenty-four  officers  with  whom  they 
had  started  toward  Colenso.  There  were  all 
the  other  arms  of  the  service  and  the  guns  of 
the  sister  service  on  marvellously  improvised 
gun-carriages,  drawn  by  great  oxen  and  sur- 
rounded by  the  "  handy  men  "  of  the  navy,  no 
longer  in  "  blue  jackets,"  but  in  khaki  and 
broad-brimmed,  ragged  straw  hats.  There 
were  the  ambulances  and  stretchers  of  the  med- 
ical corps,  than  which  there  is  none  better,  and 
even  the  ''  body  snatchers,"  the  stretcher-bear- 
ers, whom  the  men  who  had  come  in  from  the 
outside  cheered  mightily,  much  to  the  surprise 
of  the  garrison,  who  imagined  we  were  mocking 
the  unkempt,  disreputable-looking  ununiformed 
mob.  But  we  knew  that  the  mob  had  followed 
close   on  the  heels  of  the  firing-line  and  had 

caught  the  wounded  Tommy,  even  as  he  fell. 

82 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

No  men  of  Buller's  column  were  so  greatly 
ridiculed  as  were  the  unhappy  refugee  stretcher- 
bearers,  and  none  were  more  genuinely  admired. 
Each  of  them  had  made  the  red  cross  on  his 
arm  a  red  badge  of  courage  and  honor. 

It  was  a  pitiful  contrast  which  the  two  forces 
presented.  The  men  of  the  garrison  were  in 
clean  khaki,  pipe-clayed  and  brushed  and  pol- 
ished, but  their  tunics  hung  on  them  as  loosely 
as  the  flag  around  its  pole,  the  skin  on  their 
cheek-bones  was  as  tight  and  as  yellow  as  the 
belly  of  a  drum,  their  teeth  protruded  through 
parched,  cracked  lips,  and  hunger,  fever,  and 
suffering  stared  from  out  their  eyes.  They 
were  so  ill  and  so  feeble  that  the  mere  exercise 
of  standing  was  too  severe  for  their  endurance, 
and  many  of  them  collapsed,  falling  back  to  the 
sidewalk,  rising  to  salute  only  the  first  troop  of 
each  succeeding  regiment.  This  done,  they 
would  again  sink  back  and  each  would  sit  lean- 
ing his  head  against  his  musket,  or  with  his 
forehead  resting  heavily  on  his  folded  arms. 
In  comparison  the  relieving  column  looked 
like  giants  as  they  came  in  with  a  swinging 
swagger,  their  uniforms   blackened  with   mud 

and  sweat  and   blood-stains,   their  faces  brill- 

83 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

iantly  crimsoned  and  blistered  and  tanned  by 
the  dust  and  sun.  They  made  a  picture  of 
strength  and  health  and  aggressiveness.  Per- 
haps the  contrast  was  strongest  when  the  bat- 
talion of  the  Devons  that  had  been  on  foreign 
service  passed  the  "reserve"  battalion  which 
had  come  from  England.  The  men  of  the  two 
battalions  had  parted  five  years  before  in  India, 
and  they  met  again  in  Ladysmith,  with  the  men 
of  one  battalion  lining  the  streets,  sick,  hungry, 
and  yellow,  and  the  others  who  had  been  fight- 
ing six  weeks  to  reach  it,  marching  toward  them, 
robust,  red-faced,  and  cheering  mightily.  As 
they  met  they  gave  a  shout  of  recognition,  and 
the  men  broke  ranks  and  ran  forward  calling 
each  other  by  name,  embracing,  shaking  hands, 
and  punching  each  other  in  the  back  and 
shoulders.  It  was  a  sight  that  very  few  men 
watched  unmoved.  Indeed,  the  whole  three 
hours  was  one  of  the  most  "brutal  assaults 
upon  the  feelings  "  that  it  has  been  my  lot  to 
endure.  One  felt  he  had  been  entirely  lifted 
out  of  the  politics  of  the  war,  and  the  question 
of  the  wrongs  of  the  Boers  disappeared  before  a 
simple  proposition  of  brave  men  saluting  brave 

men. 

84 


THE   RELIEF   OF   LADYSMITH 

Early  in  the  campaign,  when  his  officers  had 
blundered,  General  White,  that  Colonel  New- 
come  of  to-day,  had  dared  to  write  :  ''  I  alone 
am  to  blame."  But  in  this  triumphal  proces- 
sion twenty-two  thousand  gentlemen  in  khaki 
wiped  that  line  off  the  slate,  and  wrote,  ''Well 
done,  sir,"  in  its  place,  as  they  passed  cheering 
before  him  through  the  town  he  had  defended 
and  saved. 


85 


CHAPTER   IV 

MY    FIRST    SIGHT    OF    THE    BOER 

AFTER  the  relief  of  Ladysmith,  General 
Buller  announced  that  his  column 
would  not  again  move  for  a  week  or  ten  days, 
but  at  the  end  of  ten  days  he  doubted  if  he 
could  possibly  move  for  another  three  weeks. 

This  seemed  too  long  a  time  in  which  to  lie 
idle  in  the  corrugated-zinc  dust-bin  of  Lady- 
smith,  and  I  sailed  for  Cape  Town  in  order  to 
join  Lord  Roberts  and  advance  with  his  col- 
umn from  Bloemfontein  to  Pretoria.  But  on 
arriving  at  Cape  Town  I  learned  that  Lord 
Roberts  did  not  intend  to  move  for  three 
weeks,  either,  and  so  I  decided  to  say  farewell 
to  the  British  Army,  to  go  to  Pretoria  by  way 
of  Lorenzo  Marquez,  and  to  watch  the  Boers 
fighting  the  same  men  I  had  just  seen  fighting 
them. 

This  change  of  base,  I  should  like  to  add, 
was  taken  with  the  full  knowledge  and  con- 

86 


MY   FIRST    SIGHT   OF   THE   BOER 

sent  of  the  English  officials,  both  civil  and 
military.  They  knew  I  was  leaving  them  to  go 
to  Pretoria,  and  they  assisted  me  on  my  way. 
From  the  Cape  Town  end  Sir  Alfred  Mil- 
ner  instructed  the  commandant  at  Durban, 
which  was  under  the  strictest  martial  law,  to 
offer  no  objection  to  my  leaving  it  for  the 
Transvaal,  and  Captain  Lee  Smith,  the  acting 
commandant,  speeded  me  on  my  journey  with 
all  good-will  and  with  many  congratulations 
on  the  chance  before  me  of  comparing  at  such 
a  short  interval  of  time  the  two  armies  in  the 
field.  I  have  since  read  that  my  reason  for 
leaving  the  British  was  because  the  military 
press-censors  would  not  allow  me  to  send  out 
the  truth  concerning  General  Buller's  advance. 
That  is  entirely  incorrect.  A  press-censor  is  a 
nuisance,  but  he  is  a  necessary  nuisance,  and 
the  correspondent  who  objects  to  him  is  gen- 
erally of  the  class  which  proves  the  need  of 
him.  The  censors  with  General  Buller,  Major 
Jones  and  Captain  Pollen,  were  both  gentle- 
men I  had  already  met  in  London  ;  and  in 
the  field,  as  press-censors,  they  were  able,  con- 
scientious, and  fair.  I  certainly  had  no  quar- 
rel with  them,  nor  with  any  other  officer  in  the 

87 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

British  Army.  My  only  reason  for  leaving  it 
was  the  one  I  have  given — the  fact  that  I 
found  myself  facing  a  month  of  idleness. 
Had  General  Buller  continued  his  advance 
immediately  after  his  relief  of  Ladysmith,  I 
would  have  gone  on  with  his  column  and 
would  probably  have  never  seen  a  Boer,  ex- 
cept a  Boer  prisoner. 

When  the  war  opened,  I  felt  that  sympathy 
for  the  Boer  which  one  generally  holds  for  the 
under  dog,  and  which  one  would  think  all 
Americans  might  feel  for  a  people  engaged  in 
fighting  for  their  independence ;  but  in  spite  of 
this  sympathy,  and  in  spite  of  the  wishes  of  the 
editors  for  whom  I  was  acting  as  a  correspond- 
ent, and  who  desired  that  I  should  follow  the 
war  from  the  Boer  side,  I  elected  to  join  the 
British. 

I  did  this  because  I  had  never  seen  so  large 
a  body  of  troops  in  the  field  as  there  were 
British  troops  in  South  Africa,  and  it  seemed  a 
mistake  to  lose  all  that  they  could  teach  me  of 
the  most  modern  military  organizations,  equip- 
ment, and  discipline  —  things  in  which  the 
Boer  Army  was  absolutely  lacking.  I  was 
also  moved  to  join  the  English  Army  because 

88 


MY    FIRST    SIGHT    OF   THE   BOER 

almost  every  friend  I  had  in  England  was  with 
it  fighting  at  the  front. 

After  I  had  met  the  Boers  and  found  them 
to  be  the  most  misrepresented  and  misunder- 
stood people  of  this  century,  I  sympathized 
with  them  entirely.  And  I  believe  that  the 
people  of  England,  who  were  betrayed  into 
this  war  by  Mr.  Chamberlain  and  Mr.  Rhodes, 
who  misrepresented  facts,  who  suppressed  the 
truth,  who  dangled  before  their  eyes  advan- 
tages they  will  never  enjoy,  and  frightened 
them  with  evils  which  never  threatened  and 
which  never  will  exist — I  believe  if  those  peo- 
ple could  learn  the  truth,  by  three  months  of 
inquiry  in  the  Transvaal,  which  was  the  way  I 
learned  it,  their  sympathies  would  be  much  as 
mine. 

When  once  free  of  the  martial  law  of  Dur- 
ban, I  had  supposed  all  would  be  as  plain  sail- 
ing before  me  as  the  trip  made  by  the  good 
ship  Konig  from  that  port  to  Delagoa  Bay,  but 
I  had  not  sufficiently  calculated  on  the  Portu- 
guese colony  at  Lorenzo  Marquez.  For  this 
colony,  as  the  '*  buffer  "  state  between  the  Brit- 
ish warships  on  the   deep  sea  and  the  South 

African  Republic,  had  erected  such  an  intricate 

89 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

and  complex  series  of  checks,  counter-checks, 
and  entanglements,  that  it  was  easier  for  a  rich 
man  to  get  into  heaven  than  for  a  filibuster 
foreign  mercenary,  or  soldier  of  fortune  to 
cross  over  its  neutral  territory  into  the  ranks 
of  the  Transvaal  Army. 

In  order  to  reach  Pretoria  it  was  first  neces- 
sary that  I  should  take  an  oath  before  our  con- 
sul, Mr.  Stanley  Hollis,  that  I  did  not  intend  to 
fight  in  the  Boer  Army,  and  to  obtain  a  sealed 
and  stamped  document  from  him  to  that  effect. 
On  presenting  this  and  my  American  passport 
at  the  office  of  the  chief  of  police,  I  was  given 
another  sealed  and  stamped  document  stating 
that  I  had  not,  during  the  hour  I  had  spent  in 
Lorenzo  Marquez  searching  for  the  American 
consul,  committed  any  serious  crime,  and  that, 
so  far  as  the  police  were  concerned,  I  was  at 
liberty  to  depart.  With  these  I  next  appeared 
before  the  military  governor,  and  after  again 
taking  an  oath  that  I  did  not  intend  to  do  any- 
thing which  would  strain  the  relations  existing 
between  Great  Britain  and  Portugal,  I  obtained 
one  more  passport.  With  all  of  these  I  pre- 
sented myself  at  the  consulate  of  the  Trans- 
vaal republic,  where  an  alert  young  man  gave 

go 


MY   FIRST   SIGHT   OF   THE   BOER 

me  a  third  passport  and  a  permit  over  the 
Netherlands  railway  to  Pretoria  from  Komatie 
Poort,  which  is  the  station  where  the  Trans- 
vaal touches  Portuguese  territory. 

On  the  day  of  my  arrival  at  Lorenzo  Mar- 
quez  the  town  was  invaded  by  the  Irish-Ameri- 
can ambulance  corps  from  Chicago,  and  the 
Portuguese  officials  were  much  upset  in  conse- 
quence. The  sixty  members  of  the  ambulance 
corps  had  been  two  months  in  reaching  South 
Africa,  and  at  every  other  port  at  which  they 
had  touched  had  been  most  generously  treated, 
local  port  dues  and  taxes  having  been  every- 
where raised  for  their  benefit. 

But  their  Red  Cross  badges  could  not  blind- 
fold the  Portuguese,  who  kept  them  to  the 
letter  of  the  law,  refusing  to  pass  the  quinine 
and  whiskey,  which  apparently  formed  the 
chief  part  of  their  medical  supplies,  and  taxing 
them  at  the  custom-house  two  shillings  be- 
fore they  would  pass  the  American  flag.  The 
ambulance  corps  expressed  itself  rather  freely 
in  consequence,  and  for  the  good  of  all,  the 
American  consul  persuaded  the  Portuguese 
railway  officials  to  speed  the  corps  on  its  way 
in  a  special  train  before,  as  he  significantly  ex- 

91 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

pressea  it,  in  the  phrase  of  Jameson  raid  mem- 
ory, they  **  upset  the  apple-cart."  We  over- 
took them  the  next  morning  at  Komatie  Poort, 
where  they  were  safely  inside  the  Boer  boun- 
dary, and  were  snapping  their  fingers  at  United 
States  secret  service  officers,  British  consuls, 
and  Portuguese  governors. 

Komatie  Poort  was  a  sunny,  well-cared-for 
little  town,  with  a  clean,  smart-looking  station. 
It  might  have  been  competing  for  one  of  those 
prizes  which  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  gives 
to  the  stations  on  the  line  that  are  kept  up  to 
the  highest  standard  of  attractiveness.  It  only 
needed  Komatie  Poort  spelled  in  geraniums, 
with  a  border  of  clam-shells,  to  be  in  the 
highly  commended  class. 

It  is  hard  to  say  exactly  what  we  expected 
to  find.  Since  I  have  reached  the  Transvaal  I 
have  been  so  busy  taking  in  new  ideas  about 
the  Boer  and  getting  rid  of  most  of  the  old 
ones,  that  the  original  picture  I  had  of  him  has 
become  dim  and  elusive.  Yet  mine  was  prob- 
ably the  impression  of  him  which  is  still  held 
by  some  millions  of  my  fellow-countrymen. 

A  young  man  in  a  starched  khaki  uniform 
put  his  head  in  at  the  window  of  the  railroad 


MY   FIRST    SIGHT    OF   THE   BOER 

carriage,  and  at  sight  of  the  ladies  took  off 
his  hat.  That  was  my  first  meeting  with  the 
*'foul  and  unkempt"  Boer.  He  wanted  pass- 
ports, and  he  asked  in  excellent  English  if  I 
would  come  with  him  to  the  commandant. 
The  commandant  was  an  immense,  jolly,  busy 
man,  in  a  suit  of  ready-made  '*  store  "  clothes 
and  a  white  helmet.  He  shook  hands  and 
bowed  and  laughed  and  brought  me  to  a 
grave,  long-bearded  man,  who  looked  like 
a  well-to-do  New  Jersey  farmer.  The  latter 
wrote  his  initials  on  my  passport  and  gave 
some  orders  to  the  railway  official  in  the  red 
hat. 

'*  That  is  all  right  now,"  said  the  comman- 
dant. *'  You  need  not  open  your  luggage. 
It  is  all  passed." 

In  the  meantime  a  railway  porter,  having 
found  that  the  Portuguese  had  reserved  my 
compartment,  hunted  up  a  large  blue  and  white 
sign  with  an  inscription  to  the  same  eflfect,  and 
fastened  it  to  the  door  of  the  carriage.  He 
also  shook  hands  and  bowed  and  smiled.  An- 
other official  brought  a  bottle  of  most  excel- 
lent French  wine  WTapped  up  in  a  newspaper, 
and  suggested  as  it  was  going  to  be  a  warm 

93 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

ride,  that  I  had  better  accept  this  with  his  com- 
pHments. 

The  Chicago  contingent  were  waving  the 
American  flag  and  cheering,  and  for  the  mo- 
ment Americans  were  popular,  but  apart  from 
all  possible  question  of  self-seeking,  I  have 
seldom  met  with  greater  good-natured  kind- 
ness and  politeness  than  I  encountered  on  my 
first  entrance  into  the  Transvaal,  a  politeness 
and  simple  courtesy  which  have  continued  ever 
since. 

We  moved  off  between  great  stretches  of 
light-green  mountains  that  turned  as  they  re- 
ceded into  a  light  blue  and  purple.  There 
were  but  few  trees.  Dark  willows  and  straight 
poplars  told  where  a  farm-house  stood  and 
fringed  the  water-ways,  but  the  general  land- 
scape of  bare  hills  and  valleys  w^as  a  light 
green,  covered  with  the  same  cacti  and  mes- 
quite  bushes  that  one  finds  in  Texas.  The 
sun  was  a  gorgeous  blazing  South  African 
sun  that  pierced  the  clouds  so  fiercely  that  it 
robbed  them  of  the  shadow  which  in  more 
temperate  zones  is  found  on  the  side  nearer  to 
the  earth.  They  were,  instead,  masses  of  spot- 
less white,  without  motion  or  apparent  moist- 

94 


Three  Generations  of  Boers  Now  Fighting. 


MY    FIRST    SIGHT    OF   THE   BOER 

ure,  like  vast  cotton  balls,  of  the  dead  white 
which  one  sees  on  the  icing  of  a  cake. 

Ours  was  a  leisurely  but  a  triumphant  prog- 
ress. At  trim  little  stations,  set  in  flowers 
and  surrounded  by  a  dozen  or  more  houses  of 
red  brick  and  the  inevitable  corrugated  zinc, 
the  station  hands  came  out  to  cheer  the  Ameri- 
can ambulance  corps,  and  the  naked  Swazi 
boys  who  turned  the  switchboards  grinned  a 
welcome.  As  this  welcome  continued,  the  ap- 
pearance of  my  fellow-passengers  underwent  a 
gradual  and  mysterious  change. 

Little  Frenchmen  in  Tam  o'Shanters  and 
red  sashes,  who  had  been  shy  and  inconspicu- 
ous in  the  presence  of  the  Portuguese  gov- 
ernor and  his  haughty  clerks,  now  swaggered 
along  the  platform  at  each  new  stopping-place, 
in  costumes  which  became  by  hourly  additions 
more  and  more  warlike.  What  apparently 
had  been  an  abashed  and  obtuse  German  farm- 
hand developed  into  an  alert  artilleryman,  with 
a  skull  and  cross-bones  on  each  button  of  his 
uniform.  A  Russian  count,  who  had  passed 
as  an  attache,  appeared  suddenly  in  the  full 
skirts,  boots,  and  silver  cartridge-cases  of  a 
Cossack    officer,    and    showed    the    wound    he 

95 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

had  received  in  the  Boer  trenches.  Coats  of 
arms  and  ribbons  of  the  Transvaal,  which  came 
apparently  from  nowhere,  began  to  fasten 
themselves  on  the  sombreros  of  my  compan- 
ions, and  medals  of  foreign  wars  suddenly 
sprouted  upon  their  breasts. 

The  Chicago  ambulance  corps  laughed  and 
winked.  Already  the  men  had  found  that  the 
Red  Cross  bandage  had  become  burdensome 
and  bound  them  too  tightly.  It  was  stopping 
the  circulation  of  the  fighting-blood  in  their 
Irish  veins.  Two  days  later  all  but  five  of  the 
bandages  had  been  ripped  off  forever.  I  am 
only  reporting  what  happened.  If  I  were  ex- 
pressing opinions  I  would  be  forced  to  say 
that  it  is  not  becoming  that  the  Red  Cross 
flag  should  be  used  to  cover  a  fighting  man. 

I  like  these  particular  men  for  themselves, 

and    because    they   travelled    many   thousand 

miles  to  risk  their  lives  for  people  fighting  for 

their  independence,  but  I  do  not  like  the  garb 

in  which  they  came.     It  gives  our  critics  the 

right  to  say  that  the  Irish-Americans  tricked 

and    deceived,  and  abused   an    emblem  which 

is    the    protection    of    the    helpless    and    the 

wounded.      Even    some    of   the    Boers   shake 

96 


MY   FIRST   SIGHT   OF   THE   BOER 

their  heads  and  say  :  **  It  is  a  pity  they  came 


so." 


Toward  midday  we  had  our  first  sight  of  the 
Boer  miHtant.  He  was  a  red-bearded  farmer 
with  a  slouch  hat,  carrying  a  bandolier  over 
his  shoulder  and  a  Mauser  in  his  hand.  He 
could  not  possibly  appreciate  the  intense  inter- 
est with  which  we  regarded  him.  The  ambu- 
lance corps  surrounded  him  in  an  admiring, 
double  circle.  He  was  not  exactly  what  they 
had  expected  to  see.  He  was  neither  ferocious 
nor  sullen,  nor  a  wild  man  of  the  bush. 

He  was,  instead,  a  simple,  kindly  eyed,  un- 
educated farmer.  He  had  been  home  on  fur- 
lough to  see  his  wife,  and  was  going  back  again 
to  the  firing-line.  He  was  going  back  without 
any  pay,  without  any  enticements  or  medals  or 
rewards  or  pensions,  without  the  assurance  that 
in  his  absence  an  Absent  Minded  Beggar  fund 
or  a  Mansion  House  purse  would  support  his 
wife  and  children. 

No  one  had  offered  him  the  freedom  of 
any  city  ;  none  of  the  American  millionnaires 
who  had  dug  their  money  out  of  the  soil  of  his 
country  had  subscribed  to  give  him  a  hospital 
ship ;    no    pretty   ladies   poured    out    tea   for 

97 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

him  at  Sherry's  under  the  patronage  of  Mrs. 
Langtry  and  Olga  Nethersole  ;  no  kind  friends 
presented  him  with  a  field-glass,  nor  "a  house- 
wife," nor  a  copy  of  ''Bloc  on  War,"  or  Baden 
Powell's  ''Aid  to  Scouting,"  nor  a  kodak  cam- 
era, nor  a  bottle  of  meat  tabloids,  nor  a  sparklet 
squeezer,  nor  a  Mappin  &  Webb's  wrist  watch, 
nor  a  patent  water-filter,  nor  a  knit  night-cap, 
nor  khaki  pajamas,  nor  a  pair  of  Stowassers. 
Fancy  going  to  war  without  Stowassers  and  a 
bottle  of  tan  dressing.  This  Boer  soldier  had 
his  bandolier  and  his  rifle,  and  at  parting,  the 
station-master,  who  had  been  in  the  same  com- 
mando, shook  hands  with  him  and  said  :  *'  Good- 
by,  Piet."  That  was  his  "send-off,"  and  it  was 
likely  to  be  his  epitaph. 

At  the  next  station  he  was  joined  by  three 
more  farmers  and  the  son  of  one  of  them, 
a  boy  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  boy  was  not 
elated  at  the  idea  of  being  a  soldier.  He  did 
not  swagger  nor  tell  of  what  he  had  already 
done  to  the  British,  which  in  a  boy  of  his  age 
might  have  been  pardoned.  Instead,  he  put 
his  rifle  in  a  corner  and  produced  a  melodeon, 
on  which  for  many  hours  he  continued  to  draw 

forth  mournful  and  execrable  sounds. 

98 


MY    FIRST    SIGHT   OF   THE   BOER 

There  are  many  boys  in  the  Boer  Army. 
Four  of  them  are  sons  of  Reitz,  the  Secretary 
of  State.  His  father  told  me  proudly  of  how 
the  youngest,  who  is  fifteen  years  old,  covered 
a  British  Tommy  and  called  upon  him  to  hold 
up  his  hands.  As  his  comrades  had  already 
surrendered,  the  Tommy  threw  down  his  gun 
and  said  to  the  boy  :  "  I  don't  care.  I'm  bloom- 
ing well  sick  of  this  war,  anyway.  Ain't  you  ?  " 
"  Oh,  no,"  protested  young  Reitz,  simply,  ''  for 
father  says  that  when  the  war  is  over  he's  going 
to  send  me  back  to  school." 

At  every  station  along  the  line  there  were  a 
few  Boers  gathered  to  cheer  the  ambulance 
corps.  There  were  never  more  than  three  or 
four  men  to  do  the  cheering,  for  every  man 
who  is  not  absolutely  needed  to  direct  a  train 
or  to  work  a  telegraph  button,  is  at  the  front, 
and  all  have  been  there  once  or  twice  already. 
But  w^henever  the  Irishmen  appeared  on  the 
platforms  and  at  the  windows,  there  would  be 
much  handshaking  and  more  cheering.  An 
old  Boer  patriarch  with  white  beard  and  gray, 
deep-set  eyes,  who  might  have  posed  for  one 
of  the  Huguenot  fathers,  took  off  his  hat  at 
sight  of  the  flag  of  our  republic,  and  kept  mut- 

99 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

tering  to  himself,  *'  Ach,  daas  is  goed,  daas  is 
goed,"  until  the  train  pulled  out  of  the  station. 
He  thought  it  meant  intervention  ;  he  thought 
that  the  flag  floating  from  the  car  platform,  and 
where,  by  the  way,  it  had  no  business  to  be, 
meant  that  the  American  warships  were  already 
steaming  into  Delagoa  Bay.  He  thought  that 
because  sixty  wild  Irish  boys  from  "across  the 
tracks "  of  Chicago  had  come  ten  thousand 
miles  to  help  him  fight  for  his  liberty,  the 
seventy  millions  of  Americans  they  had  left 
behind  were  coming,  too. 

To  thirty  thousand  men  —  for  I  am  con- 
vinced, after  much  careful  inquiry,  that  that  is 
all  the  Boers  have  had  in  the  field  at  one  time 
— sixty  men  count  for  something.  But  one 
could  not  help  comparing  the  arrival  of  these 
sixty  with  the  transports  steaming  into  Table 
Bay,  each  with  its  thousands  of  men  in  khaki, 
so  many  thousands  that  no  one  in  Cape  Town 
ever  turned  to  look  at  them — transports  from 
Australia,  transports  from  Canada,  from  India, 
from  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  England,  and  cattle 
ships,  with  horses,  mules,  and  oxen,  from  Syd- 
ney, from  Buenos  Ayres,  from  Madrid  and 
Cadiz,  from  New  Orleans  and  Bombay. 

xoo 


MY    FIRST   SIGHT    OF   THE   BOER 

One  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  picked 
men,  "from  all  the  world,"  '' going  to  Table 
Bay  "  to  fight  thirty  thousand  farmers,  clerks, 
attorneys,  shopkeepers,  and  school-boys,  for  the 
gold  that  lies  in  the  Rand — gold  which  has 
made  the  Boer  neither  happy  nor  rich.  For 
have  you  ever  heard  of  a  Boer  who  has  dug 
his  fortune  out  of  the  gold  mines  ?  Do  you 
know  one  Boer  who  owns  a  steam  yacht  or 
who  has  built  a  house  in  Park  Lane  ? 

The  Boer  owns  the  soil  from  which  the  gold 
comes,  but  the  Uitlander  owns  the  gold.  What 
money  the  Boer  has  taken  out  of  the  mines  by 
means  of  taxes,  concessions,  the  dynamite  mo- 
nopoly, and  the  liquor  law,  has  not  gone  into  his 
pockets,  but  into  weapons  of  war ;  has  not  been 
spent  in  another  country,  but  in  defending  his 
own.  When  gold  was  first  discovered  here,  the 
republic  was  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy,  and  a 
Boer  burgher  rushed  to  the  President  in  great 
delight  to  acquaint  him  with  the  news  and  to 
assure  him  that  now  that  gold  was  found,  the 
credit  of  the  country  was  secured. 

"  Gold  !  "  growled  Kruger.  **  Do  you  know 
what  gold  is  ?  For  every  ounce  of  that  gold 
you  will  pay  with  tears  of  blood.     Go  to  your 

lOI 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

farm  and  read  the  Book.  It  will  tell  you  what 
gold  is." 

We  halted  at  night  at  Waterval  Onder,  and 
the  next  morning  were  dragged  slowly  up  a 
steep  incline  over  the  mountains.  It  was  easy 
to  understand  why  the  Boer  loves  his  country. 
The  mountains  of  red  rock  and  light  green  grass 
followed  each  other  in  magnificent  confusion  as 
far  as  one  could  see.  The  river  poured  down 
between  them  for  many  miles,  leaping  from 
one  height  to  the  next  in  a  succession  of  low, 
wide-spreading  water-falls.  Great,  clean  bowl- 
ders as  high  as  a  four-story  house  blocked  the 
water-ways  and  formed  deep  silent  pools,  over- 
hung by  drooping  trees  and  tangled  creepers. 
The  sun  shone  brilliantly  on  the  white  break- 
ers of  the  water-falls,  on  the  green  mountain 
slopes,  and  on  those  bare  spaces  where  the 
hematite  had  streaked  the  sides  of  rock  a  gor- 
geous red  and  yellow.  There  was  little  sign  of 
habitation  in  the  landscape,  but  it  held  a  look 
of  home.  It  was  not  barren  or  forbidding,  but 
big  and  open,  and  full  of  color  and  beauty  and 
sunshine. 

Farther  on  toward  midday  the  aspect  of  the 
country  changed  and  we  came  to  the  broad, 

102 


MY   FIRST   SIGHT   OF   THE   BOER 

windy  velt,  and  the  sprawling  kopjes  covered 
with  rolling  stones,  the  same  manner  of  coun- 
try I  had  already  seen  with  Buller's  column  at 
Colenso.  The  veldt  stretched  for  many  level 
miles,  without  a  rise  or  break  except  those 
made  by  the  little  stone  farm-houses  of  one 
story  and  the  surrounding  circle  of  great  pop- 
lars and  the  great  kopjes.  They  were  the  same 
sort  of  kopjes  which  had  held  back  the  English 
at  the  Tugela,  the  same  naturally  fortified  hills, 
the  skyline  of  which  we  had  so  often  scanned 
to  catch  even  a  brief  glimpse  of  a  Boer.  It 
gave  me  quite  a  shock  to  see  the  kopjes  again, 
and  then  to  turn  and  find  the  Boer,  with  his 
bandolier  and  rifle,  smoking  peaceably  in  the 
seat  beside  me. 

There  was  a  large  crowd  at  Middelburg,  and, 
as  it  was  Good  Friday,  everyone  had  been  to 
church  and  was  in  his  or  her  best  bravery.  The 
people  cheered  the  Chicago  boys,  and  Captain 
O'Connor  brought  out  the  flag  and  waved  it 
over  them. 

The  Landdrost  made  a  speech,  an  eager  and 
earnest  speech,  full  of  fight  and  courage,  and 
the    Americans   cheered    him    and   the   South 

African  Republic.     Many  more  Boers  boarded 

103 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

the  train  here,  and  while  the  speechmaking  was 
going  forward  entered  the  carriages  and  sat  at 
the  windows  saying  farewell  to  the  women  and 
children  who  had  come  in  with  them  from  the 
farms,  and  leaning  out  to  hold  their  hands. 
The  Boer  women  wore  deep  black  alpaca  frocks 
and  black  sunbonnets,  and  under  the  cover  of 
these  were  weeping.  They  made  a  contrast  to 
the  white  starched  dresses  and  bright  colors  of 
the  other  women  and  little  girls  of  Middelburg 
who  were  giving  flowers  and  the  Transvaal  rib- 
bon to  the  American  volunteers.  The  men 
from  "across  two  seas"  received  the  simple 
welcome  modestly  and  becomingly. 

I  have  travelled  with  many  soldiers  on  trains 
and  transports  and  on  the  march,  with  our  own 
regulars,  with  "Tommies,"  volunteers  and  sol- 
diers of  foreign  lands,  but  I  never  saw  men  be- 
have better  than  did  the  Chicago  contingent. 
The  temptations  which  beset  them  on  the  way- 
side were  many.  They  had  been  six  weeks  at 
sea,  and  that,  apart  from  the  fact  that  they  were 
going  "  to  the  front  "  through  a  friendly  coun- 
try, with  refreshment-bars  at  every  station,  was 
sufficient  excuse  for  over-rejoicing.     But,  on 

the  contrary,  the  men  conducted  themselves  as 

104 


MY   FIRST   SIGHT   OF   THE   BOER 

well  as  the  best  disciplined  troops  in  the  world, 
and  were  then,  as  they  were  later  in  Pretoria, 
well-behaved  and  self-respecting.  There  was 
no  band  to  play  for  them  at  Middelburg,  so 
just  before  the  train  moved  on,  the  Landdrost 
gathered  the  Boers  and  the  women  and  girls 
together  and  sang  a  hymn  to  them. 

The  women's  voices  were  thin  and  inade- 
quate, and  the  big,  broad-chested,  heavily  beard- 
ed men  disregarded  the  tune  scandalously,  but 
the  spirit  of  the  act  was  true.  The  words  were 
in  Dutch,  but  the  refrain  was  :  "  God  keep 
you  well."  That  much  we  could  understand. 
It  was  all  they  had  to  offer.  A  brass  band 
would  have  meant  nothing  but  noise,  but  the 
tribute  of  good  wishes  from  the  women  and 
little  girls  and  old  men  touched  the  American 
boys  deeply. 

They  stood  in  close  order,  with  their  cam- 
paign hats  off  and  heads  bent.  Beyond  them 
were  the  group  of  women  in  black,  who  were 
bidding  good-by  to  their  sons  and  praying  for 
their  return  from  the  front. 

And  that  was  what  the  Boer  women  and  lit- 
tle girls  were  doing  as  well  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage  for  the  Americans,   because    they   had 

105 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

come  to  fight  for  them,  because  they  were  go- 
ing straight  to  the  front,  perhaps  to  die  for 
them,  because  their  own  women  folks  were  far 
away,  some  ten  thousand  miles  away,  and  were 
not  able  to  wish  them  godspeed. 

And  so  it  happened  that  on  Good  Friday  last 
the  Boer  women  of  the  Transvaal  were  praying 
for  the  sons  of  the  women  of  the  city  of  Chi- 
cago, of  Cook  County,  in  the  State  of  Illinois. 


lo6 


CHAPTER  V 

PRETORIA    IN    WAR-TIME 

IF  Pretoria  is  awaiting  her  doom,  she  is  await- 
ing it  calmly.  If  the  republic  is  at  war, 
she  does  not  allow  that  fact  to  disturb  the 
peaceful  repose  of  her  capital.  She  gives  so 
few  signs  here  that  her  burghers  are  holding 
back  the  troops  of  the  greatest  empire  on  the 
globe  that  a  stranger  might  dwell  in  Pretoria 
for  a  month  and  see  nothing  in  her  streets  to 
make  him  suspect  that  he  was  in  the  capital  of 
a  government  at  war  for  its  independence. 

It  has  always  been  the  aim  of  President 
Kruger  and  his  counsellors  to  preserve  in  Pre- 
toria the  patriarchal  idea  upon  which  the  re- 
public is  founded.  Johannesburg  was  abjured 
by  them  as  a  modern  city,  the  Uitlanders'  city, 
the  city  where  the  streets  were  lined  with  gold, 
the  city  of  vast,  intricate  machinery,  of  vaster 
and  more  intricate  speculations  ;    where    men 

in  one  night  lost  the  value  of  twenty  thousand 

107 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

head  of  oxen  on  a  hand  at  poker,  where  one 
American  mining  engineer  received  a  salary 
four  times  as  great  as  that  of  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  where  in  five  years  a  former 
circus  clown  made  one  hundred  million  dollars. 
In  their  eyes  it  was  a  wanton  city,  and  to  off- 
set its  modern,  foreign  air,  the  life  and  customs 
of  Pretoria  were  ordered  in  keeping  with  the 
simplicity,  conservatism,  and  outdoor  life  of 
the  Boer. 

The  President  of  the  republic  lives  in  what 
we  could  call  a  whitewashed  cottage.  The 
church  in  which  he  preaches  to  his  people 
faces  him  from  across  the  street.  His  official 
residence  might  be  that  of  its  pastor.  On  the 
porch  of  this  cottage,  with  a  cup  of  coffee  at 
his  elbow  and  a  long  pipe  between  his  lips,  he 
discusses  and  transacts  the  affairs  of  state.  The 
children  from  the  school-house  on  the  corner 
come  to  visit  him  at  recess  and  hang  over  his 
fence,  and,  unawed  by  the  two  helmeted  police- 
men and  the  two  marble  lions,  they  talk  to  the 
President  and  he  talks  to  them. 

In  the  public  square  of  the  capital,  where 
the  Palace  of  Justice  and  the  Government 
Building  face  each  other,  there  is  also,  side  by 

io8 


<3J 
be 
C3 
-t-> 

o 
U 


c/5 


PRETORIA    IN   WAR-TIME 

side  with  office  buildings,  banks,  and  hotels 
that  would  be  the  pride  of  any  of  our  smaller 
cities,  a  thatched  cottage.  And  in  the  square 
itself,  under  the  windows  of  the  new  building 
which  cost  three  millions  of  dollars,  the  Boer 
farmers  and  cattle-dealers  cook  their  meals 
over  an  open  fire,  their  oxen  "  outspanned " 
beside  the  cabs,  their  women  and  children 
seated  on  the  feather-beds  inside  the  great 
canvas-covered  carts.  It  is  the  idea  of  the 
President  that  every  burgher,  no  matter  from 
how  far  he  may  have  driven  his  oxen,  may 
feel  that  when  he  reaches  this  capital  he,  as  a 
part  of  the  State,  is  at  home  and  welcome. 

Pretoria  reposes  drowsily  at  the  bottom  of 
a  basin,  a  great  bowl  made  of  hills.  There  is 
a  crack  in  the  bowl,  and  it  is  through  this 
crack  that  the  British  Army,  when  it  comes, 
will  enter  the  capital.  In  the  meantime  Pre- 
toria, shut  in  from  the  outside  world  not  only 
by  her  circle  of  hills  but  by  censors,  armies, 
and  a  blockade  of  warships,  waits  tranquilly. 
For  none  of  these,  even  while  it  increases  her 
isolation,  can  disturb  her  calm.  A  session  of 
the  Volksraad,  when  it  meets  here  may  arouse 

her,  because  that  is  of  interest  to   every  man 

109 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

over  sixteen  years  of  age  in  the  republic  ;  but 
the  fact  that  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
British  soldiers  are  advancing  upon  her,  limp- 
ing, it  is  true,  but  still  advancing,  is  a  circum- 
stance too  foreign  to  her  experience  to  ruffle 
her  composure. 

From  any  elevation  Pretoria  is  a  beautiful 
place,  a  great  park  of  tall,  dark -green  poplars, 
with  red  roofs  shining  through,  and  the  towers 
of  the  public  buildings  and  the  gilded  figure  of 
Liberty  rising  over  all.  From  a  distance  Pre- 
toria has  almost  the  look  of  Florence.  The 
hills  about  her  are  so  high  that  the  white,  sun- 
lit clouds  are  near  enough  when  they  pass  to 
write  their  names  upon  them  ;  and  they  con- 
tinue for  so  great  a  distance  that  they  turn,  as 
they  draw  away,  from  a  light  green  to  a  purple, 
and  then  to  a  misty,  turquoise  blue. 

Pretoria  down  in  the  basin  itself  is  not  so 
beautiful.  It  is  throughout  half  suburb  and 
half  city,  with  corrugated-zinc  cottages  next  to 
a  bank  building,  and  a  State  museum  adjoin- 
ing the  meat-market,  but  with  trees  and  flowers 
and  running  water  everywhere.  The  houses 
are  of  one  story,  each  of  them  set  in  gardens 
of  rose   bushes  and  many   of  the  older  ones 

no 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

roofed  with  thatch  ;  but  the  government  build- 
ings, the  shops,  the  banks,  and  business  houses 
are  metropoHtan.  They  suggest  a  new  city  of 
our  West,  and  some  of  them,  the  banking- 
houses  around  the  city  square,  are  of  the  best 
style  of  architecture  as  it  is  adapted  to  homes 
of  business.  But  the  red  dust,  the  chief  char- 
acteristic of  South  Africa,  and  the  ox-cart,  the 
moving  home  of  the  Boer,  destroy  the  illusion 
of  a  city. 

The  trek-wagons  are  as  incongruous  as  are 
the  costers'  donkey-carts  in  Piccadilly.  They 
are  the  most  picturesque  relics  which  remain 
to  us  from  the  days  of  the  emigrant  and  of  the 
pioneer.  The  caravan  of  camels  still  obtains, 
but  it  belongs  to  a  people  who  have  never  left 
anything  behind  them,  who  have  never  pro- 
gressed one  stride  in  advance  of  the  camel,  and 
to  whom  the  caravan  with  its  rolled  up  tents  and 
bales  of  merchandise  is  still  part  of  their  daily 
life.  But  the  trek-wagon  exists  in  a  land  of 
railroads  and  telegraphs,  and  rubs  wheels  with 
victorias  and  tram-cars.  It  is  much  like  the 
great  hooded  carts  which  the  empire  makers 
of  our  West  drove  across  the  prairie,  the  real 

"ships  of  the  desert,"  that  carried  civilization 

III 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

with  them,  and  that  blazoned  forth  on  their 
canvas  as  the  supreme  effort  of  the  pioneer, 
"  Pike's  Peak  or  Bust."  The  ox-cart  is  the 
most  typical  possession  of  the  Boer,  and  it  and 
the  lion,  and  the  man  with  the  rifle  inh  is  hand, 
are  the  three  emblems  of  the  national  coat-of- 
arms. 

The  cart  is  drawn  by  from  five  to  ten  pair  of 
oxen  led  by  a  small  Kaffir,  the  ''  voortrekker," 
and  belabored  from  behind  by  another  Kaffir, 
with  a  whip  as  far  reaching  as  a  salmon  line. 
In  the  front  seat  sits  the  head  of  the  family 
and  behind  him  are  his  women  folk  in  a  mys- 
terious zenana,  from  which  they  emerge  clad 
in  white  starched  linen,  showing  that  the  cart 
must  contain,  besides  its  bunks  and  mattresses, 
as  many  ingenious  wardrobe-boxes  and  cubby- 
holes as  the  cabin  of  a  ship.  At  the  back  of 
the  long  wagon  sit  the  Kafhr  women  and  their 
naked,  beaded  children.  The  rifle  hangs  ready 
at  hand  beside  the  box-seat  ;  water-kegs,  pots, 
and  pans  swing  between  the  wheels,  and  tools 
and  fodder-boxes  hang  from  either  side. 

The  calm  of  the  Pretoria  streets  is  the  calm 
of  the  people.  In  travelling  from  Ladysmith 
to   Pretoria    I    have  found   nothing  to    be   in 

112 


o 


CO 
u 


O 


_2 


00 
'J 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

greater  contrast  than  the  composed  acceptance 
of  the  war  by  the  Boer  and  the  Englishman's 
complete  absorption  in  it.  In  London,  Cape 
Town,  in  Durban,  in  Ladysmith,  on  the  steam- 
ers, in  the  field,  the  Englishman  reads,  talks, 
thinks  of  nothing  else.  Here  the  chief  men 
of  the  Government  find  time  to  meet  at  a  club 
twice  a  day  to  smoke  and  talk  on  almost  any 
other  subject.  Yet  each  of  them  has  been  to 
the  front  for  a  month  at  a  time,  or  for  three 
months  together,  and  each  of  them  is  going 
back  again,  but  he  speaks  of  his  having  been 
there  without  boasting  or  excitement,  much  as 
though  he  were  a  neutral  who  had  run  down 
to  the  battle-field  to  take  photographs  and  col- 
lect exploded  shells  as  souvenirs.  I  have  heard 
one  of  them  secure  the  entire  attention  of 
every  man  in  the  club  by  recounting  his  ad- 
ventures on  a  hunting-trip  which  he  had  taken 
during  his  leave  of  absence  from  his  com- 
mando, and  his  friends  were  much  more  keen 
to  know  how  his  pointers  and  setters  had  be- 
haved than  what  his  men  had  done  in  the 
firing-line.  I  commented  on  this,  and  one  of 
them    told   me   that    during   a  reconnaissance 

which  the  British  made  from  Ladysmith  and 

113 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

when  the  burghers  were  firing  upon  them,  a 
couple  of  deer  ran  from  the  hills  back  of  the 
Boer  position.  Instantly  almost  every  burgher 
whirled  about,  and  turning  his  back  to  the 
enemy,  opened  a  fusillade  on  the  deer. 

To  a  great  power  such  as  is  Great  Britain, 
this  war  should  be  only  an  incident.  But, 
strangely  enough,  it  is  the  Boer  who  appears 
to  consider  it  an  incident,  an  unfortunate  oc- 
currence requiring  severity  upon  his  part  and 
entailing  the  punishment  of  a  wayward  and 
mistaken  enemy.  He  discusses  the  war  toler- 
antly and  patiently.  He  expresses  a  great  pity 
that  such  fine  fellows  as  the  English  soldiers 
should  have  come  out  so  far  to  be  killed.  He 
can  grow  excited,  but  that  is  only  momentary  ; 
his  accustomed  attitude  toward  the  war  is  one 
of  subdued  interest. 

What  makes  the  remarkable  resistance 
which  the  Boer  has  shown  to  the  British  forces 
the  more  remarkable,  is  this  fact  of  his  lei- 
surely indifference  to  it  all.  He  goes  from  the 
farm  to  the  firing-line  and  back  again  to  the 
farm  almost  at  will,  and  what  is  even  more  sur- 
prising is  the  fact  that  when  he  is  in  the  field 

he  apparently   only  takes   part  in  an  engage- 

114 


PRETORIA    IN    WAR-TIME 

ment  when  he  feels  incHned  to  do  so.  It  is  a 
usual  thing  for  a  hundred  of  them  to  lie  in 
a  trench  protecting  the  position,  and  opposed 
sometimes  to  a  thousand  men,  while  the  re- 
maining three  or  four  hundred  of  their  com- 
rades, who  do  not  wish  to  fight,  will  be  seated 
a  hundred  yards  down  the  kopje  smoking  and 
eating.  At  Sand  River,  within  three  hundred 
yards  of  the  artillery  which  was  firing  desper- 
ately on  Lord  Roberts's  advancing  column,  I 
saw  a  thousand  Boers,  and  not  one  of  them 
was  apparently  conscious  that  a  battle  was 
going  forward  or  that  his  services  were  badly 
needed.  They  sat  among  the  rocks  and  talked 
together,  or  slept  in  the  shade  of  a  mesquite 
bush,  or  mounted  their  ponies  and  rode  away. 
It  is  almost  impossible  to  believe  how  few 
men  are  needed  to  hold  one  of  these  defensive 
positions,  and  I  am  convinced  that  throughout 
the  war  one  man  to  ten  has  been  the  average 
proportion  of  Boer  to  Briton,  and  that  fre- 
quently the  British  have  been  repulsed  when 
their  force  outnumbered  that  of  the  Boers 
twenty  to  one.  What  terrible  losses  the 
burghers  would  have  caused  had  they  occupied 
the  trenches  in  force  is  something  the  nations 

115 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

which  next  meditate  going  to  war  with  mod- 
ern magazine  rifles  should  weigh  deeply.     The 
Boers   tell   you  casually  when   leading  up    to 
some  other  point,  that  at  such  and  such  a  fight 
they  placed    ten    men    on    one    kopje  and  on 
another  twenty.     At  Spion  Kop  the  attack  on 
the  hill  was  made  by  forty  men,  so  few  indeed, 
so  they  claim,  that  one  of  the  English  colonels 
surrendered,    and   then    on    seeing,    when   the 
Boers  left  cover,  to  what  a  small  force  he  was 
opposed,  threw  down  the  white  flag  and  cried, 
"  No,  we'll  not  surrender,"   and   fired  on  the 
Boers   who   were   coming   up   to   receive   his 
rifles.     One  can  imagine  what  an  outcry  such 
an    incident  as   this  would   have  called   forth 
from  the  English  papers  had  it  been  the  Boer 
who    first    raised    the    white    flag    and    then 
thouo^ht  better  of  it.     But  the  comment  the 
Boer  made  on  this  '*  treachery "  was,  '' It  was 
probably  a  mistake.     Perhaps  someone  without 
authority  raised  the  white  flag  and  the  colonel 
did  not  know  that.      He  wounded  seventeen 
of  our  men,  but  I  believe  it  was  a  mistake." 

A  number  of  Pretorians  were  at  Nicholson's 
Nek,  and  they  tell  me  that  at  that  place  their 
men  were  so  few  in  proportion  to  the  eleven 

ii6 


u 

■u 
> 


'J 

u 
X 


PRETORIA   IN    WAR-TIME 

hundred  British  soldiers  who  surrendered,  that 

when  the  burghers  sent  a  detachment  from  the 

trenches  to  take  the  Englishmen's  arms,  their 

own  men  were  entirely   swallowed  up  in  the 

crowd,  and  they  lost  sight  of  them  altogether. 

Every  burgher,  which  means  every  man  over 

sixteen  years  of  age  who  can  carry  a  rifle,  is 

allowed  twelve  days'  leave  of  absence  out  of 

each  three  months.     If  he  overstays  his  leave, 

which  the  women,  who  are  even   more  keen 

than  the  men,  seldom  permit  him  to  do,  he  is 

brought  back  to  his  regiment  or  ''commando  " 

under  arrest.     But  for  this  there  appears  to  be 

very  little  punishment.     What  there  is  consists 

of  fines,  which   the  burghers  cannot  pay  and 

which  are  remitted  indefinitely  until  "after  the 

war,"  and  of  enforcing  pack  drill,  and  police 

work  around  the  camp.     It  is  almost  always 

the  same  men  who  force  the  fighting ;  that  is, 

the   same  forty  men  out  of  a  commando  of 

three  hundred  will  always  volunteer  to  fight  in 

the  trenches,  while  the  remainder  help  them 

from    time   to   time   exactly  as    they   see   fit. 

Knowing  this,  the  wonder  grows  as  to  what 

would  have  happened  to  the  British  forces  if 

the  Boer  had  been  a  relentless  foe  with  a  taste 

117 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

for  blood-letting  and  slaughter,  instead  of  one 
quite  satisfied  to  hold  his  position  with  the  least 
possible  exertion,  and  with  the  least  danger  to 
himself.  The  accounts  of  his  successful  marks- 
manship are  undoubtedly  correct.  It  is  owing 
to  this  and  to  his  ability  to  judge  distances  in 
this  peculiarly  deceptive  atmosphere  that  his 
fire,  coming  though  it  does  from  so  few  rifles, 
is  so  fatally  effective.  Eighty  per  cent,  of  the 
men  in  each  commando  are  what  we  should 
consider  sharp-shooters ;  and  as  opposed  to 
them  the  Boers  tell  me  that  after  a  charge  they 
have  often  picked  up  the  English  rifles  where 
the  soldiers  have  fallen  a  hundred  yards  from 
the  Boer  trench,  and  found  that  the  sights  on 
the  Lee-Metfords  were  adjusted  for  eight  hun- 
dred to  eleven  hundred  yards.  Of  course,  with 
sights  at  that  range,  no  sharp-shooter,  certain- 
ly no  Tommy,  could  hit  a  Boer  at  a  hundred 
yards,  even  if  the  burgher  stood  up  and  made 
a  target  of  himself. 

But  it  is  the  conduct  of  the  Boer  in  Pretoria 
rather  than  his  bearing  in  the  field  which  is  of 
the  greater  and  more  curious  interest.  For,  as 
I  have  written,  in  Pretoria  he  gives  us  no  sign 
that  war  exists. 

ii8 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

His  shop-windows  are  filled  with  something 
better  than  relics  from  battle-fields,  portraits  of 
his  generals,  or  caricatures  of  his  enemy,  and  he 
advertises  nothing  as  being  *'  absolutely  essen- 
tial to  all  officers  going  to  the  front."  I  know 
of  only  two  shop-windows  in  Pretoria  where 
anything  is  exhibited  which  would  suggest  that 
the  country  is  at  w^ar.  One  of  them  is  a  row  of 
bullets  and  spent  shells,  and  the  other  is  a  col- 
lection of  camp  mattresses.  They  are  not 
marked  as  being  essential  to  anyone  going  to 
the  front,  or  elsewhere.  You  can  take  them 
or  leave  them.  Compare  this  modest  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  that  a  war  is  going  forward,  with 
what  you  find  in  Cape  Town,  Durban,  and  even 
in  London.  There  at  once  you  come  upon 
hysterical  patriotism  and  an  unpleasant  idea 
that  everybody  is  trying  to  make  money  out  of 
the  patriotism  of  everyone  else. 

There  is  hardly  a  shop-window  in  any  of 
these  cities  that  is  not  dressed  to  catch  the  eye 
of  the  man  ''  going  south."  In  three  different 
shops  in  Piccadilly  he  is  offered  three  different 
kinds  of  hats  as  the  "  only  authorized  hat  is- 
sued to  the  Yeomanry."  And  yet  they  cannot 
all  be  the  authorized  hat.     Somebody  must  be 

119 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

trying  to  make  an  honest  penny.  If  he  does 
not  want  an  authorized  hat  he  is  allured  by 
thousands  of  styles  of  watch-charms,  ribbons, 
and  sleeve-links  decorated  with  the  Union 
Jack,  the  Lion  and  the  Unicorn,  a  portrait  of 
the  Queen,  of  Chamberlain,  of  Milner,  of 
Rhodes.  He  is  tempted  by  khaki  overcoats, 
khaki  underclothes,  khaki  blankets,  khaki  neck- 
ties, khaki  night  -  shirts,  although  almost  all 
colors  look  the  same  at  night ;  patent  stoves, 
patent  medicines,  patent  picket -pins,  patent 
gaiters,  waterproofs,  water-bottles,  water-filters, 
compressed  beef  tablets,  stomach-bands,  com- 
passes, cakes  of  chocolate,  campaign  pocket- 
knives,  campaign  folding  beds,  folding  tables, 
folding  camp-stools,  folding  maps,  portraits  of 
Buller,  of  Baden-Powell,  of  Roberts,  of  Kitch- 
ener, plaster  statuettes  of  "  the  gentleman  in 
khaki,"  the  same  gentleman  reproduced  on 
letter-paper,  on  fans,  on  pocket-handkerchiefs, 
postal-cards  with  Caton  Woodville's  war-pict- 
ures in  one  corner,  boxes  of  cigarettes  bristling 
with  photographs  of  the  war-heroes,  hat-bands 
and  banners  bearing  the  name  of  Ladysmith, 
Kimberley,  Mafeking. 

Every  war  is  the  shopman's  opportunity,  and 

1 20 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

he  can  be  excused.  But  the  calmness  and  fair- 
ness with  which  the  Boer  regards  the  war  and 
his  enemy,  in  comparison  with  the  hysteria  of 
the  Enghshman  on  the  same  subject,  are  novel 
and  unexpected  developments.  Englishmen 
are  generally  calm,  sane,  and  cool-headed,  and 
to  the  Englishman  war  is  no  new  thing. 

*'Oh,  we  always  have  some  little  war  on 
somewhere,"  Englishmen  say.  You  have  only 
to  pass  Sanford's  shop  in  Cockspur  Street  to 
prove  how  true  this  is.  In  the  window  there 
is  never  less  than  one  map  displayed,  with  little 
flags  stuck  over  it,  showing  the  position  of  the 
English  forces  at  war  in  India,  in  the  Soudan, 
or  along  the  west  coast  of  Africa. 

And  this  also  is  only  a  little  war.  The  South 
African  Republic  is  about  the  littlest  nation  on 
the  map.  One  would  think  that  if  Great  Brit- 
ain meant  to  wipe  it  off  the  slate  she  would 
have  done  so  quickly,  or  when  she  found  that 
this  was  difficult,  she  would  not  call  the  atten- 
tion of  the  world  to  the  fact  that  she  was  in 
trouble,  but  would  cover  it  up,  make  light  of 
it,  and  would  try  to  throw  us  off  the  scent  by 
starting  a  world's  fair,  or  manoeuvring  her 
squadron  ;  that  she  would  do  anything  before 

121 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

she  would  allow  the  Powers  to  see  that  her  en- 
tire empire  is  upset  by  thirty  thousand  farmers, 
and  that  for  six  months  they  have  held  her  and 
her  colonies  at  bay. 

Even  if  the  people  of  England  have  lost 
control  of  themselves  and  of  their  sense  of 
perspective,  her  statesmen  might  be  expected 
to  keep  their  heads,  and  to  remember  that 
South  Africa  is  only  a  part  of  the  British 
Empire,  and  that  this  is  only  one  of  England's 
little  wars.  But  apparently  no  one  has  any 
other  thought  than  of  South  Africa.  They 
have  sent  out  the  regular  army,  the  reserves, 
the  militia,  the  volunteers,  three  dukes,  the 
Honorable  Artillery  company,  the  post-office 
clerks,  the  barristers  from  the  Temple,  the 
cashiers  from  the  bank,  the  yeomen  from  the 
farms,  the  *' special  corps"  of  *' gentlemen,"  the 
crofters  and  gillies  from  Scotland,  the  caddies 
from  the  golf  links,  the  Canadian  rough  riders, 
the  Australian  mounted  police,  the  New  Zea- 
land Light  Horse,  the  Bengal  lancers,  the 
Indian  coolies. 

And  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  they  have 

been  forced  to  do  this,  they  are  going  to  give 

the  loyal  colonials,  the  same  colonials  that  they 

I?? 


PRETORIA   IN    WAR-TIME 

snubbed  so  quickly  when  they  first  offered 
their  services  before  the  war  began,  a  trium- 
phal march  through  the  streets  of  London,  in- 
stead of  sending  them  home  quickly  and  se- 
cretly so  that  no  one  would  know  that  they 
had  had  to  call  upon  them  for  help. 

They  have  sent  the  good  Queen  to  Ireland 
for  the  first  time  in  half  a  century,  electioneer- 
ing, and  have  bribed  the  Irish  with  the  priv- 
ilege, which  they  should  always  have  enjoyed, 
of  standing  guard  at  St.  James's  Palace.  They 
have  robbed  the  ships-of-war  of  men  and  of 
guns,  they  have  coquetted  with  poverty-strick- 
en Portugal,  they  have  sent  all  the  way  to 
Klondike  to  get  an  American  to  act  as  their 
chief  of  scouts,  and  they  have  finally  sent  their 
two  great  generals  to  the  front,  only  to  find 
that  they  have  but  one  great  general,  and  that 
the  other,  upon  whom  they  had  lavishly  be- 
stowed a  fortune  and  a  title,  is  not  a  tactician 
nor  a  fighting  man,  but  an  intelligent  train- 
despatcher  and  chief  of  commissariat. 

One  would  think  that  some  sane  man  in  the 

nominal   opposition   party  would  point  out  to 

the  Government  that  this  war  is  a  good  subject 

to  drop,  to  lay  on  the  table,  that  it  is  not  one 

123 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

to  discuss  to  crowded  galleries,  that  it  is  only 
showing  to  the  amused  Powers  of  Europe 
weakness  after  weakness.  We  have  all  for 
so  long  believed  England  to  be  a  great  mili- 
tary Power  that  at  first  we  excused  defeat  af- 
ter defeat.  We  even  cabled  them  home  as 
**  reverses." 

But  to-day  no  real  friend  of  England  would 
try  to  hide  the  fact  that  she  is  in  a  precarious 
and  ridiculous  predicament,  and  that  she  is  go- 
ing about  saving  the  remnants  of  her  lost  pres- 
tige in  the  wrong  way.  A  friend  of  England, 
which  I  certainly  claim  to  be,  would  beg  her 
to  call  upon  her  sense  of  humor,  to  get  back 
her  sense  of  proportion,  to  act  as  though  this 
war  was  not  so  very  serious — as  though  it  were 
an  incident.  Let  us  advise  her  to  stop  her 
Absent- Minded  Beggar  funds  and  all  the 
other  undignified  appeals  to  private  purses  for 
that  which  should  come  out  of  the  national 
exchequer.  It  is  not  becoming  that  every 
actress  who  wants  an  adv^ertisement  and  every 
colonial  millionnaire  who  wants  a  knighthood 
should  be  permitted  to  pass  the  hat  for  the 
British  Tommy.     The  rattle  of  the  tambourine 

is  being  heard  much  too  distinctly.      It  is  lack- 

124 


PRETORIA    IN   WAR-TIME 

ing  in  dignity,  It  Is  **  not  done."  It  is  not 
what  we  have  learned  in  the  past  to  expect 
from  our  English  cousins. 

We  have  a  small  war  of  our  own  on  our 
hands  at  present.  We  have  an  army  of  60,000 
men  locked  up  In  the  Philippines,  having 
taken  all  of  its  chief  cities,  from  none  of  which 
it  dares  move  at  night  for  fear  of  being  capt- 
ured. In  our  newspapers  we  give  our  war  a 
short  quarter  of  a  column  of  space  a  day,  part- 
ly because  we  are  rightly  ashamed  of  it  and 
partly  because  we  are  too  busy  over  other 
things  to  treat  it  except  as  an  incident. 

The  Boer  treats  his  war  as  an  incident.  He 
is  not  hysterical.  He  does  not  repeat  every 
old  woman's  tale  of  poisoned  w^ells  and  poi- 
soned bullets,  of  treacherous  white  flags,  or 
talk  of  hanging  rebels,  nor  accuse  the  enemy 
of  cruelty,  brutality,  and  firing  on  Red  Cross 
flags.  When  a  man  Is  in  the  wrong  he  in- 
variably blusters  and  makes  wild  accusations 
to  cover  up  the  fact  that  he  is  ashamed  of  him- 
self and  of  what  he  is  doing. 

If  a  man  has  your  watch  you  merely  go  to 
the  nearest  policeman  and  say:  ''That  man 
has  my  watch."     But  If  you  are  planning  to 

125 


WITH    BOTH    ARMIES 

take  his  watch  you  first  blacken  his  character 
and  rake  up  all  his  past  history  to  prove  that  he 
is  a  despicable  ruffian.  You  say  :  *'  He  is  a 
foul,  unkempt  person,  and  I  mean  to  take  his 
gold  watch."  '*  He  does  not  wash,  and  I  mean 
to  take  his  gold  watch."  ''  He  sings  hymns  on 
the  battle-field  and  quotes  the  Bible  correctly, 
which  proves  he  is  a  hypocrite,  so  I  mean  to 
take  his  gold  watch."  *'  He  refuses  to  allow 
me  full  burgher  rights  and  to  sing  'God  Save 
the  Queen '  at  the  same  time,  and  so  I  mean  to 
take  his  gold  mines." 

It  must  be  because  the  English  are  so  con- 
scious of  the  injustice  of  this  war  that  they 
rail  as  they  do  at  the  Boer.  The  Boer,  with 
his  independence  threatened,  might  be  excused 
if  he  railed  at  the  men  who  are  trying  to  rob 
him,  but  he  does  not.  He  is  only  somewhat 
hurt  and  a  good  deal  dazed  at  the  charges  they 
make  against  him,  but  he  is  still  good-humored, 
calm,  and  determined. 

For  the  last  four  months  I  have  sat  in  tents, 

on   steamer-decks,   and  on   the  terrace  of  the 

Mount  Nelson  Hotel  and  listened  to  old  friends 

from  London  talk  on  this  war  with  a  spirit  of 

intolerance,    unfairness,   and    credulity    which 

126 


PRETORIA    IN   WAR-TIME 

made  me  doubt  if  they  could  possibly  be  the 
same  sportsmanlike,  healthy-minded,  well-bal- 
anced men  that  I  had  formerly  known.  Never 
in  its  most  unlicensed  moments  did  the  yellow 
press  of  America  concoct  such  absurd  stories, 
as  clean-limbed,  clean-minded  English  officers 
will  believe  and  retell  against  the  Boer,  their 
enemy,  whom  few  of  them,  except  those  who 
have  surrendered,  have  ever  seen. 

Compare  their  attitude  of  mind  toward  the 
Boer  with  the  attitude  of  the  Boer  toward 
them — the  Boer  who  has  had  to  suffer  many 
things,  who  has  every  excuse  to  censure,  who 
has  much  to  forgive. 

The  wife  of  one  of  the  chief  men  in  the  re- 
public told  me  of  a  call  she  made  on  Mrs. 
Kruger  three  days  after  the  battle  of  Spion 
Kop.  I  will  report  what  happened  exactly  in 
her  words.  She  found  the  wife  of  the  Presi- 
dent red-eyed  with  weeping  and  in  a  state  of 
complete  dejection.  "The  President,"  ex- 
plained Mrs.  Kruger,  "has  just  received  a  tele- 
gram from  General  Botha.  He  says  the  Eng- 
lish have  not  buried  their  dead  yet  at  Spion 
Kop.     It  is  three  days  now  and  they  are  still 

lying  there.      I  cannot  understand  why  it  is  so. 

127 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

Even  the  birds  respect  a  dead  body  so  much 
that  they  will  not  touch  it  for  three  days ;  then 
tell  me  why  is  it  that  these  English  have  no  re- 
spect for  their  own  dead.  I  cry  when  I  think 
of  the  mothers  and  children  of  these  poor  men. 
You  will  excuse  me,  but  I  have  been  so  mis- 
erable I  have  not  changed  my  dress.  I  cannot 
sleep  to-night  if  I  think  those  men  are  lying 
there  yet." 

You  remember  the  Queen's  message,  begin- 
ning, ''My  heart  bleeds,"  and  so  on,  *'for  my 
soldiers."  Mrs.  Kruger's  heart  bled,  too,  for 
the  Queen's  soldiers,  the  men  who  had  been 
sent  to  rob  her  of  her  home  and  country.  Com- 
pare the  two,  the  good  Queen  sent  to  Ireland, 
after  neglecting  it  for  fifty  years,  to  encourage 
enlistment,  and  the  wife  of  the  Boer  President, 
weeping  over  the  soldiers  who  had  tried  to  kill 
her  countrymen.  Which  shows  the  greater 
unselfishness,  the  more  Christian  spirit,  the 
nobler  charity  ? 

The  sequel  I  hardly  care  to  write.  But  in 
as  brief  words  as  possible  be  it  told  that  Gen- 
eral Botha  wrote  to  BuUer  requesting  permis- 
sion to  bury  the  English  dead  and  asking  for  a 

guarantee  that  his  men  would  not  be  fired  on 

128 


CJ      ^ 


<       ^ 


V 

j: 


PRETORIA   IN    WAR-TIME 

while  thus  engaged.  Buller  replied  that  he 
would  guarantee  protection  to  the  Boers  while 
they  were  burying  the  English,  and  requested 
that  they  should  "send  him  in  a  bill  for  their 
trouble." 

This  reply  of  Buller's  and  the  charge  of  the 
Fifth  Lancers  at  Elandslaagte  are  the  only  two 
incidents  of  the  war  which  a  Boer  cannot  dis- 
cuss with  tolerance.  Save  for  these  two  in- 
cidents I  cannot  find  that  they  have  any  hard 
feelings  toward  the  English  except  those,  of 
course,  which  are  aroused  by  the  fact  of  his  try- 
ing to  rob  the  Boer  of  his  liberty.  But  these 
two  incidents  have  hurt  deeply. 

The  charge  of  the  Fifth  Lancers  was  de- 
scribed by  an  officer  of  the  regiment  in  a  letter 
home  as  ''good  pig-sticking,"  and  consisted, 
so  the  Boers  say,  of  the  lancers  stabbing  the 
wounded  Germans  and  Dutch  volunteers  as 
they  lay  on  the  ground  waiting  for  the  ambu- 
lances, and  as  they  raised  their  hands  for  mercy. 
One  Swiss  hotel-waiter  was  brought  in  here 
from  Elandslaagte  with  a  bullet  wound  in  the 
knee  which  had  brought  him  to  the  ground 
and  seventeen  lance  wounds  in  his  body  which 

he  had  received  from  apparently  each  Tommy 

129 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

who  rode  over  him.  But  so  far  as  I  can  learn, 
what  hurt  the  Boers  more  than  the  stabbing  of 
the  wounded  men  on  the  ground  is  that  one 
unfortunate  line  of  the  English  officer  who  de- 
scribed the  charge  as  good  "  pig-sticking." 

It  is  the  ill-breeding  and  useless  callousness 
and  brutality  of  that  remark  which  the  Boer 
cannot  understand.  The  officer,  let  us  hope, 
has  been  crowded  out  of  the  regiment,  but  his 
phrase  was,  with  rare  lack  of  taste,  copied 
widely  into  all  of  the  English  newspapers. 
The  fact  that  this  was  done  shows  in  itself 
how  since  the  war  the  taste  and  judgment  of 
so  many  people  in  England  have  fallen  below 
the  old  standard  and  have  become  hardened 
and  distorted. 

We  see  it  also  in  the  fact  that  in  one  of  his 
letters  Mr.  Kipling  speaks  jauntily  of  **  a  good 
killing,"  and  Winston  Churchill  even,  than 
whom  there  is  no  one  among  English  corre- 
spondents for  whom  I  entertain  a  higher  re- 
gard, writes,  *' we  had  a  good  *  bag '  to-day — ten 
killed,  seventeen  wounded."  It  is  not  becom- 
ing that  a  great  genius  like  Rudyard  Kipling 
should  not  see  something  more  in  the  killing 

of  a  few  poor  farmers  than  a  day's  pig-killing  in 

130 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

the  Chicago  stockyards,  and  that  the  death  of 
ten  of  his  enemies  should  weigh  no  more  heav- 
ily on  Mr.  Churchill's  buoyant  and  clever  mind 
than  would  a  bag  of  grouse  on  his  shoulder. 
War  is  all  sad,  and  it  is  all  wrong.  It  is  a 
hideous  relic  of  the  age  of  stone.  It  is  out- 
rageous and  indecent.  But  as  it  must  obtain 
we  should  lend  to  it  every  semblance  of  dig- 
nity. If  we  must  kill  our  fellow-man,  let  us 
at  least,  as  we  pass,  cover  his  staring  eyes  with 
his  helmet  and  as  men  respect  a  brave  man. 
But  in  this  campaign  everything  seems  to  have 
been  done  to  degrade  war,  to  make  it  even 
more  brutal  than  it  is  ;  to  callous  the  mind  tow- 
ard it ;  to  rob  it  of  all  of  its  possible  heroism 
and  terrible  magnificence.  We  have  the  inci- 
dent of  the  British  officer  who  protested  loud- 
ly against  General  Cronje  receiving  a  cigar 
when  he  asked  for  one  ;  of  another  who  dis- 
tributed Mrs.  Cronje's  wisp  of  false  hair  as 
a  souvenir  to  his  brother  officers ;  of  Captain 
C.  of  the  Scots  Greys,  who  photographed  the 
Boers  while  the  Tommies  bayoneted  them. 
These  incidents  make  warfare  worse  than  bru- 
tal.    It  becomes  vulgar. 

I  prefer  to  remember  that  Admiral  Cervera 

131 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

sent  an  officer  to  the  American  Admiral  to 
assure  him  of  the  safety  of  Hobson  and  his 
crew  after  they  had  attempted  to  bottle  up  the 
Spanish  fleet,  and  to  congratulate  him  on  their 
courage,  and  that  Captain  Phillips  called  to  his 
men  when  they  had  sunk  the  Spanish  battle- 
ship, "  Don't  cheer  !  those  men  are  drown- 
mg! 

It  was  actually  a  relief  to  reach  Pretoria, 
where  one  hears  the  war  discussed  without 
violence,  abuse,  or  exaggeration,  where  the 
death  of  one  or  of  many  of  the  enemy  is 
spoken  of,  not  with  rejoicing,  but  with  regret ; 
where  his  reckless  bravery  is  admired  and  con- 
doned as  a  fault  of  youth,  and  where  men 
whose  bullets  I  dodged  at  Pieter's  Hill  from 
the  English  lines  listen  to  my  side  of  the  story 
of  the  same  fight  without  prejudice  or  suspicion 
or  ill-will. 

If   the   English    must   abuse   someone  they 

might  begin  on  all  of  their  own  generals,  with 

the   exception    of    Lord   Roberts,   Sir  George 

White,    General    French,    and    Baden-Powell, 

and  might  court-martial  three  or  four  of  the 

others.     Then  the  prestige  of  their  arms  would 

rise  again.     For  no  one  can  blame  a  man  who 

132 


PRETORIA   IN    WAR-TIME 

employs    incapable    servants,  until   they  have 
proved  themselves  so. 

The  English  generals  have  been  tried  and 
found  wanting.  On  this  occasion  it  was  the 
fault  of  the  generals ;  should  Great  Britain 
make  use  of  them  again  it  will  be  her  fault. 
It  was  her  misfortune  that  hers  should  be  the 
first  of  the  great  armies  of  the  Old  World  to 
wage  war  under  modern  conditions,  and  this 
war  which  England  forced  upon  the  Boer  is 
helping  to  educate  Europe.  The  Powers  are 
learning  through  Great  Britain's  mistakes  and 
expenditure  of  life  and  money  what  not  to 
do.  They  are  strengthening  themselves  at 
her  expense.  But  Great  Britain  is  not  learn- 
ing. Instead  of  recalling  the  men  who  have 
blundered,  and  proclaiming  by  so  doing  that 
the  standard  of  her  army  is  still  what  we  all 
used  to  believe  it  to  be,  she  shields  them,  once 
more  sends  them  forward  and  begs  them  not 
to  do  it  again.  The  British  War  Office  is  not 
adaptable,  it  cannot  change  in  midstream,  it 
cannot  pick  out  the  natural  leader  and  throw 
over  the  general  made  at  Aldershot  and  at  the 
Guards  Club. 

England,  instead  of  admitting  that  she  has 

133 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

been  mistaken,  that  the  man  whom  she  sup- 
posed to  be  the  great  leader  of  men,  is,  after 
all,  only  a  dull  butcher  who  continually  butts 
his  head  against  a  stone  wall  and  who  has  lost 
her  more  men  by  his  lack  of  wit  than  the  Boers 
have  killed  with  their  rifles,  sends  him  on 
again  to  Van  Reenan's  Pass  to  butcher  more 
Tommies,  to  butt  his  head  against  more  stone 
walls.  Wellington  held  back  Napoleon  and 
defeated  the  greatest  army  of  veterans  of  this 
century  at  Waterloo,  with  a  loss  of  7,000  men. 
It  cost  BuUer  5,000  men  to  relieve  Ladysmith. 

With  the  exception  of  the  capture  of  Cronje 
by  Lord  Roberts,  which,  after  all,  was  the 
capture  of  3,000  men  by  20,000,  with  20,000 
more  hurrying  up  in  reserve,  there  has  not 
been  in  six  months  a  single  British  victory 
except  of  a  negative  character.  If  you  think 
over  it  you  will  find  that  the  men  who  so  far 
have  made  reputations  out  of  this  war  have 
done  so  by  holding  their  own,  not  by  advanc- 
ing on  the  enemy  or  entering  his  territory.  I 
do  not  consider  Lord  Roberts,  as  his  reputa- 
tion was  made  many  years  ago. 

But  the  men  who  have  won  distinction  in 
this  war  are  Sir  George  White,  who  held  his 

134 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

own  at  Ladysmith ;  Baden- Powell,  who  held 
his  own  at  Maf eking ;  French,  who  relieved 
Ladysmith  ;  Winston  Churchill,  who  escaped 
from  prison  ;  and  Bugler  Dunn,  to  whom  the 
Queen  gave  her  portrait  and  a  silver  bugle. 
That  is  rather  a  light  showing  after  six  months' 
continuous  fighting,  especially  if  against  that 
list  of  heroes  you  should  place  in  parallel  col- 
umn a  list  of  men  who  have  failed — Kitchener, 
who  lost  i,ioo  men  at  Paadersburg,  and  was 
in  consequence  sent  to  do  police  work  among 
the  rebels ;  Buller,  Methuen,  Gatacre,  Warren, 
Broadwood,  Coleman,  and  Long.  It  is  like 
reading  the  tombstones  in  a  graveyard. 

Compare  that  list  with  the  list  of  men  who 
came  out  of  the  Spanish- American  War  with 
a  record  of  something  attempted  and  some- 
thing done.  I  do  not  make  this  comparison 
as  an  American,  but  because  it  illustrates  that 
in  war,  which  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  pro- 
fessions, intelligence  is  the  only  thing  which 
should  count.  It  is  not  years  of  service ;  if  it 
were,  the  man  who  has  been  night  watchman 
at  a  bank  for  thirty  years  might  lay  claim  to 
the  position  of  cashier.  It  is  intelligence,  and 
again  intelligence. 

135 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

Duller  has  a  dozen  ribbons  ;  all  the  other 
English  generals  have  seen  service  in  at  least 
a  half-dozen  campaigns.  But  bravery  we  take 
for  granted,  and  experience  counts  for  noth- 
ing, service  counts  for  nothing,  training  counts 
for  nothing,  without  an  intelligent  mind  to 
make  use  of  them  and  to  direct  them.  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt,  who  never  saw  a  battle  until 
he  went  to  Cuba,  but  who  is  abnormally  intel- 
ligent, would  make  a  better  general  to-day 
than  any  of  these  gentlemen  who  have  con- 
ducted army  corps  along  the  M odder  River 
and  the  Tugela. 

In  three  months  there  came  out  of  the  cru- 
cible of  our  little  war  Dewey,  Sampson,  Schley, 
Roosevelt,  Hobson,  and  Leonard  Wood,  who 
in  six  weeks  was  promoted  from  the  rank  of 
captain  to  that  of  brigadier-general,  and  in 
three  months  was  a  major-general  and  Gov- 
ernor of  Santiago,  and  who  is  now  Governor- 
General  of  the  whole  island  of  Cuba.  All 
these  men  did  something  ;  they  sank  a  fleet  or 
took  a  fort :  they  showed  intelligent  execu- 
tive ability.  They  did  not  merely  **  hold  their 
own,"  nor  conduct  a  masterly  retreat.  Dewey 
was  not   an  accident.     He   was   not   sent   to 

136 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

Manila  on  account  of  his  place  in  the  line  of 
promotion,  but  he  was  selected  from  among 
others  because  he  was  known  to  be  of  excep- 
tional intelligence  ;  Sampson  was  also  pushed 
over  the  heads  of  the  commodores  who  ranked 
him,  for  the  same  reason. 

We  sought  out  intelligence  and  we  rewarded 
intelligence.  Miley  when  he  went  to  Cuba 
was  only  a  first  lieutenant,  and  he  came  out  of 
the  war  a  lieutenant-colonel,  and  no  one  de- 
served promotion  more  and  no  one  while  he 
lived,  through  the  increased  influence  which 
his  promotion  gave  him,  was  of  greater  service 
to  the  army.  But  it  would  have  been  impos- 
sible for  Leonard  Wood  to  rise  in  the  British 
Army  in  three  months  from  the  rank  of  captain 
to  that  of  brigadier-general.  Napoleon  could 
not  have  done  it.  It  would  have  been  against 
the  precedent  and  traditions  of  the  British  War 
Office. 

I  am  not  sure  that  they  have  any  Napoleons 
or  Mileys  or  Funstons  or  Woods  in  the  regi- 
mental ranks  of  the  British  Army,  but  if  they 
are  there,  they  will  remain  concealed  until  this 
war  is  over.  Twenty  years  from  now  they  may 
obtain  command,  but  the  British  War  Office 

137 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

cannot  in  six  months  adapt  itself  to  new  con- 
ditions, nor  face  new  facts,  nor  turn  upon  its 
history  and  recognize  new  men. 

We  all  were  with  Great  Britain  as  soon  as 
her  difficulties  began.  We  had  not  forgotten 
how  she  came  to  our  aid  when,  without  hei' 
help,  a  coalition  of  the  Powers  might  have  put 
us  to  sore  humiliation.  But  she  must  see  now 
that  her  difficulties  ran  on  for  too  long  a  time. 
The  under  dog  at  which  ''  the  lion  and  her 
cubs  "  had  been  snarling  and  snapping  made 
too  strong,  too  manly,  too  intelligent  a  fight 
for  his  liberty  for  one  to  sympathize  any  longer 
with  the  lion's  blunders  and  hysteria  and  ram- 
pant, impotent  patriotism. 

During  this  crisis  the  Englishman  did  not, 
unfortunately,  see  himself  as  others  saw  him. 
He  acted  and  talked  and  wrote  as  extrava- 
gantly about  this  little  war  as  he  would  had 
the  combined  fleets  and  armies  of  the  whole 
world  attacked  his  island  home.  He  stamped 
his  foot  and  sang  *'  Britons  never,  never  shall 
be  slaves,"  when  nobody  wanted  to  make  him 
a  slave,  and  he  recited  the  **  Absent-Minded 
Beggar  "  on  all  public  occasions,  and  wore  a 

necktie  of  the  national  colors  as  though   the 

138 


PRETORIA   IN   WAR-TIME 

foeman's  foot  were  already  on  his  shore,  in- 
stead of  seeing,  as  everyone  else  saw,  that 
after  forcing  a  war  most  insolently  and  bare- 
facedly on  one  of  the  smallest  governments  on 
the  globe,  that  smallest  government  was  giving 
him  for  six  months  a  severe  and  humiliating 
thrashing. 

It  is  well  not  to  know  when  you  are  being 
beaten,  but  it  is  also  admirable  to  be  able  to 
see  when  you  are  making  yourself  ridiculous. 
It  is  the  Englishman's  failure  to  see  this  latter 
which  leads  him  still  to  sing  "  Let  'em  all 
come  "  in  the  music-halls,  when  so  far  he  has 
not  been  able  to  whip,  not  all,  but  even  one  of 
'em,  and  that  one  the  smallest  of  the  lot. 


139 


CHAPTER  VI 

PRESIDENT    KRUGER 

T^HE  most  interesting  man  in  the  Boer  capi- 
*  tal  is  Paul  Kruger,  who  is  possibly  also 
the  man  of  the  greatest  interest  in  the  world 
to-day ;  a  man  who,  in  spite  of  his  present 
prominence  in  the  world,  lives  in  the  capital 
of  his  republic  as  simply  as  a  village  lawyer. 
Every  day,  for  the  few  brief  moments  dur- 
ing which  he  is  driven  from  his  cottage  to 
the  Government  Buildings,  surrounded  by  a 
mounted  guard  of  honor,  he  rises  to  a  degree 
of  state  to  which  our  own  President  does  not 
attain.  But  for  the  remainder  of  the  day  he 
sits  on  his  front  porch  or  in  his  little  parlor 
and  arranges  the  affairs  of  his  government 
with  as  little  display  as  that  shown  by  the 
poorest  of  his  burghers.  On  the  stoop,  sepa- 
rated from  the  sidewalk  by  only  a  bed  of  flow- 
ers, you  may  at  almost  any  hour  you  pass  see 

the  President  smoking  his  pipe  and  sipping  his 

140 


C/) 


u 

I 


(>0 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

coffee.  This  simplicity  and  democracy  and 
infinitely  to  the  interest  he  holds  for  you  as  a 
man.  It  is,  of  course,  much  more  effective 
than  any  show  of  state.  The  man  is  so  much 
bigger  than  his  surroundings  that  his  gilded 
carriage  and  troop  of  helmeted  police  do  not 
in  any  way  increase  his  dignity,  neither  to  the 
burgher  who  never  before  has  seen  a  gilt  car- 
riage, nor  to  the  High  Commissioner  of  Her 
Majesty,  who  has  ridden  in  a  gilt  carriage  of 
his  own.  The  first  time  I  heard  him  speak 
was  when  he  received  the  Irish-Americans 
who  came  from  Chicago  to  join  the  Transvaal 
Army.  They  were  drawn  up  along  the  front 
of  the  cottage  in  a  double  line,  and  while  he 
waited  for  the  arrival  of  the  State  Secretary, 
Mr.  Reitz,  who  was  to  act  as  interpreter,  the 
President  sat  on  the  porch  and  regarded  them 
through  his  black  spectacles.  When  Mr. 
Reitz  came,  the  President  walked  out  to  the 
sidewalk,  and  Colonel  Blake,  the  commander 
of  the  Irish  Brigade,  introduced  Captain 
O'Connor  of  the  Chicago  contingent.  The 
President  said  that  it  was  to  be  expected  that 
men  should  come  from  the  country  which  had 

always  stood  for  the  liberty  and  for  the  inde- 

141 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

penaence  of  the  individual  ;  that  the  cause  for 
which  they  had  come  to  fight  was  one  upon 
which  the  Lord  had  looked  with  favor ;  and 
that  even  though  they  died  in  this  war  they 
must  feel  that  they  were  acting  as  His  servants 
and  had  died  in  His  service.  He  then  in- 
structed them,  much  as  a  father  talking  to  a 
group  of  school-boys,  that  they  must  obey 
their  commanders  and  that  their  commanders 
must  obey  the  generals  of  the  Transvaal. 
Then  he  spoke  more  rapidly  and  inarticulately, 
so  that  we  guessed  it  was  something  of  great 
moment  that  we  were  about  to  hear ;  but  it 
proved  on  translation  that  he  was  enjoining 
them  to  be  very  careful  of  their  ponies,  not  to 
ride  them  too  hard,  nor  to  lame  them.  Mr. 
Reitz  translated  this  rather  grudgingly,  as 
though  he  wished  the  President  would  speak  a 
few  more  words  of  welcome  and  of  thanks  for 
the  sacrifice  the  men  were  about  to  make. 
But  the  President  had  the  care  of  the  State's 
ponies  at  heart  and  reiterated  his  injunctions 
concerning  them.  He  then  bowed  and  turned 
into  his  cottage.  I  think  he  left  the  Irish 
boys   a   little    puzzled,  as  they    had   expected 

oratory  of  an  unusual  order;  but  nevertheless 

142 


President  Kruger  Reviewing  the  Irish-American  Brigade. 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

they  cheered  him  very  heartily,  and  then 
O'Shea,  who  is  the  tenor  of  the  troop,  cleared 
his  throat  and  sang  a  hymn.  Possibly  had  the 
President  known  the  Irish  boys  better  he 
would  have  been  as  much  surprised  by  this  act 
on  their  part  as  his  own  performance  had 
puzzled  them.  ''  Jerusalem  "  was  the  hymn 
O'Shea  sang,  and  the  picture  the  men  made  as 
they  stood  under  the  trees  joining  in  the  cho- 
rus was  a  very  curious  one.  They  were  all 
armed  and  with  bandoliers  crossed  over  their 
chests,  and  gathered  around  them  were  a  few 
Boers  and  a  crowd  of  school-children  who  had 
ridden  up  on  their  bicycles  to  see  what  was 
going  forward.  I  do  not  know  whether  they 
sang  ''Jerusalem  "  in  order  to  please  the  Presi- 
dent or  as  a  sort  of  battle-hymn,  but  whatever 
the  motive,  it  was  very  effective.  They  said 
afterward  that  they  thought  President  Kruger 
was  a  very  fine  gentleman,  but  that  somehow 
he  had  '*  scared  "  them. 

My  first  meeting  with  President  Kruger  was 
very  brief,  and  I  learned  little  from  it  of  him 
then  which  has  not  been  made  familiar  to 
everyone.  Mr.  Reitz  brought  me  to  his  house 
and   we  sat  on  his  porch,  he  loading  and  re- 

143 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

loading  his  cavernous  pipe  the  while  and  star- 
ing out  into  the  street.     The  thing  that  im- 
pressed me  first  was  that  in  spite  of  his  many 
years  his  great  bulk  and  height  gave  you  an 
impression  of  strength  and  power  which  was 
increased  by  the  force  he  was  able  to  put  into 
his   abrupt   gestures.       He   gesticulated    awk- 
wardly but   with  the  vigor  of   a  young  man, 
throwing  out  his  arm  as  though  he  were  pitch- 
ing a  quoit,  and  opening  his  great  fingers  and 
clinching  them  again  in  a  menacing  fist,  with 
which    he   struck  upon    his  knee.     When  he 
spoke  he  looked  neither  at  the  State  Secretary 
nor  at  me,  but  out  into  the  street  ;  and  when 
he  did  look  at  one,  his  eyes  held  no   expres- 
sion, but  were  like  those  in  a  jade  idol.      His 
whole   face,  chiefly,    I    think,  because   of   the 
eyes,  was  like  a  heavy  waxen  mask.     In  speak- 
ing, his   lips   moved  and   most  violently,  but 
every  other  feature  of  his  face  remained  abso- 
lutely   set.     In    his   ears    he   wore   little  gold 
rings,  and  his  eyes,  which  were  red  and  seared 
with    some   disease,  were  protected  from  the 
light  by  great  gold-rimmed  spectacles  of  dark 
glass  with  wire  screens. 

So  many  men  had  come  see  him  and  to  ask 

144 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

him  to  talk  on  a  subject  for  which  the  day  for 
talk  was  past,  that  he  had  grown  properly 
weary  of  it  all ;  and  before  I  could  ask  him  for 
the  particular  information  I  hoped  to  obtain, 
he  said,  ''  I  say  what  I  have  said  before,  we  are 
fighting  for  our  independence."  He  kept  re- 
peating this  stubbornly  several  times,  and  then 
spoke  more  specifically,  saying,  ''They  are  two 
hundred  thousand,  we  are  thirty  thousand." 
''They  have  turned  the  black  men  on  the  bor- 
der against  us."  "  We  have  all  their  prisoners 
to  feed."  "  It  is  like  a  big  bully  fighting  a 
boy." 

I  asked  him  in  what  way  he  thought  the 
United  States  could  have  assisted  him. 

"  By  intervention,"  he  answered.  "  It  can 
intervene." 

I  pointed  out  that  the  President  had  already 
offered  to  intervene  and  had  been  snubbed  for 
so  doing,  and  that  it  was  not  at  all  probable 
that  he  would  do  so  again,  but  that  there  was 
much  sympathy  in  America ;  that  there  were 
many  people  anxious  to  help  the  Transvaal,  and 
I  asked  him  to  suggest  how  they  might  put 
^heir  sympathy  to  account. 

"  They  have  sent  us  a  great  deal  of  money 

145 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

for  the  Red  Cross,"  he  said,  ''and  many  of 
them  have  come  to  fight ;  but  we  cannot  pay 
the  passage  money  for  others  to  come  here,  and 
we  cannot  ask  for  help.  If  they  give  us  sym- 
pathy, or  money,  or  men,  that  is  good  and  it  is 
welcome.  We  thank  them.  But  we  will  not 
ask  for  help."  He  struck  his  knee  and  pointed 
out  into  the  street,  talking  so  rapidly  and  vio- 
lently that  the  words  seemed  as  though  they 
must  be  unintelligible  to  everyone.  But  Mr. 
Reitz  said  that  the  President  had  returned 
again  to  the  simile  of  the  big  bully  and  the 
little  boy. 

**  Suppose  a  man  walking  in  the  street  sees 
the  big  bully  beating  the  boy  and  passes  on 
without  helping  him,"  was  what  the  President 
had  said  when  he  spoke  so  excitedly.  *'  It  is 
no  excuse  for  him  to  say  after  the  boy  is  dead, 
'The  boy  did  not  call  to  me  for  help.'  We 
shall  not  ask  for  help.  They  can  see  for  them- 
selves.    They  need  not  wait  for  us  to  ask." 

He  talked  on  other  subjects :  of  Villebois- 
Mareuil,  the  French  colonel,  of  whom  he  said, 
"  When  I  heard  he  had  been  killed,  I  felt  as 
though  I   had  heard  of  the  death  of  my  own 

brother ; "  and  of  George  W.  Steevens,  whose 

146 


The  President  on  His  Vei'imda. 

Showing-  One  of  the  Marble   Lions  Presented  to   Ilini  by  Barney  Barnato. 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

.letters,  which  had  been  captured  from  Kaffir 
runners  from  Ladysmith,  I  wanted  him  to  re- 
turn to  Alfred  Harmsworth,  the  proprietor  of 
the  Daily  Mail,  The  President  said  he  had 
not  known  that  the  Government  was  in  posses- 
sion of  any  of  Steevens's  letters,  and  Secretary 
Reitz  said  he  was  also  ignorant  of  the  fact. 
But  he  assured  me  that  he  would  at  once  make 
search  for  them  and  return  them  to  Mrs.  Stee- 
vens. 

But  the  greater  part  of  what  the  President 
said  was  a  repetition  of  what  I  have  written — 
the  injustice  of  the  English,  the  fact  that  his 
people  fought  only  to  protect  their  liberty,  and 
the  unfairness  of  the  odds  against  them.  In 
many  ways  he  reminded  me  greatly  of  one  of 
our  own  presidents,  Mr.  Cleveland.  Both  men 
have  a  strangely  similar  energy  in  speaking,  a 
manner  of  stating  a  fact  as  aggressively  and 
stubbornly  as  though  they  were  being  contra- 
dicted. There  is  also  something  similar  in  the 
impressiveness  of  their  build  and  size  which 
seems  fitting  with  a  big  mind  and  strong  will  ; 
something  similar  even  in  the  little  trick  each 
has  of  shaking  his  head  when  an  idea  is  pre- 
sented to  him  which  annoys  him,  as  though  he 

147 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

could  brush  away  its  truth  with  a  gesture,  and 
in  the  way  neither  of  them  looks  at  the  person 
to  whom  he  speaks.  Resolution,  enormous 
will-power,  and  a  supreme  courage  of  convic- 
tion are  the  qualities  in  both  which  after  you 
have  left  them  are  still  uppermost  in  your 
memory. 

I  called  at  President  Kruger's  house  a  few 
hours  before  he  left  Pretoria  for  Machadodorp. 
I  was  glad  I  had  seen  him  then.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  no  man  at  the  moment  when  he  is  go- 
ing into  exile  from  his  home,  and  the  home 
also  of  the  Government  of  which  he  is  the  chief, 
could  have  borne  himself  more  calmly,  with 
greater  dignity,  or  with  a  better  spirit.  The 
Secretary  of  War  had  asked  me  to  come  to  the 
President's  cottage  to  witness  the  presentation 
of  a  message  of  sympathy  signed  by  twenty- 
nine  hundred  Philadelphia  school-boys. 

It  had  been  brought  to  Pretoria  that  morn- 
ing by  a  boy  sixteen  years  old  named  Jimmy 
Smith,  belonging  to  the  messenger  service  of 
New  York  City.  If  ever  the  President  needed 
sympathy  he  needed  it  then,  three  hours  be- 
fore he  was  to  leave  his  capital  and  seek  refuge 

in  the  mountains,  and  although  he  was  in  the 

148 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

confusion  of  departure  and  giving  last  orders 
to  his  cabinet  officers  and  generals,  he  found 
time  to  receive  the  address  and  to  be  civil  to 
the  boy  who  presented  it. 

In  one  way  the  arrival  of  any  message  of 
sympathy  at  just  that  moment  was  most  oppor- 
tune ;  from  another  point  of  view  it  was  almost 
too  opportune.  The  message  had  been  sent 
by  the  boys  to  express  sympathy  with  a  man 
who,  at  the  time  it  was  written,  was  fighting 
victoriously  for  a  cause  with  which  they  were 
in  sympathy.  But  it  arrived  when  the  cause 
was  a  lost  one,  and  so  it  seemed  as  though 
their  sympathy  was  meant  for  the  man  himself, 
because  he  had  lost.  It  was  perhaps  not  the 
happiest  moment  the  school-boys  could  have 
chosen  for  saying  that  they  were  sorry  for  a 
man  old  enough  to  be  their  great-grandfather. 

Apart  from  that,  which,  after  all,  was  no 
fault  of  the  sympathizers,  the  picture  made  by 
the  Boer  President,  and  the  New  York  mes- 
senger boy  staggering  under  his  great  roll  of 
signatures,  was  a  pathetic  and  curious  one. 

If  it  had  not  been   pathetic  it  would  have 

been  absurd.     At  one   end  of  the  dark,  low- 

ceilinged  room  stood  the  man  who,  as  a  boy  of 

149 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

ten  in  the  great  trek  of  1836,  had  fled  before 
the  British,  and  who  since  then  had  been  twice 
driven  to  seek  a  new  home  in  the  wilderness. 
He  was  now,  at  the  age  of  seventy  years,  once 
more  going  forth,  again  evicted  by  the  English, 
to  hide  like  a  wounded  lion  among  the  rocks 
of  his  mountains.  Opposite  him  was  the 
frightened,  red-haired  messenger  boy  from 
Broadway,  squeezing  his  cap  under  his  elbow, 
and  holding  out  the  roll  of  signatures  in  a 
leather  box  before  him. 

'*  Your  Excellency,"  stammered  Jimmy 
Smith. 

It  was  the  beginning  of  the  oration  he  had 
rehearsed  in  dark  corners  of  the  deck  to  the 
waves  of  the  Red  Sea  and  the  Indian  Ocean. 

Kruger  stooped  and  peered  down  at  Jimmy 
Smith  like  a  giant  ogre.  One  almost  expect- 
ed to  see  him  pinch  Jimmy  Smith  to  find  out 
if  he  were  properly  fattened  for  eating.  But 
instead  he  took  Jimmy's  hand  and  shook  it 
gravely.  Then  he  turned,  and,  according  to 
the  Boer  custom,  shook  hands  with  everyone 
else  in  the  room,  leaving  Jimmy's  speech  sus- 
pended and  helpless  in  midair.  It  was  a  ter- 
rible moment. 

150 


"Jimmy"  Smith,  who  Presented  the  Message  of 
Sympathy  to  President  Kruger. 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

Each  of  us  was  as  nervously  anxious  to 
have  that  speech  deHvered  as  though  Jimmy 
were  his  only  son. 

It  reminded  me  of  a  little  girl  I  once  saw 
who  was  to  christen  a  battle-ship,  and  who 
vainly  tried  to  hit  it  with  the  champagne  bot- 
tle as  it  slipped  steadily  out  of  her  reach.  But 
Jimmy  was  not  going  to  allow  the  President 
to  slip  away  from  him. 

''  Your  Excellency,"  he  began  again,  in  an 
excited,  boyish  treble. 

The  President  stopped  and  looked  about 
him  as  though  someone  had  tugged  at  his 
sleeve,  and  Jimmy  rushed  on  impetuously, 
running  the  words  together.  '*  I  have  been 
chosen  to  convey  to  you  this  message  of  sym- 
pathy, signed  by  twenty-nine  hundred  school- 
boys of  Philadelphia,  which  I  now  have  the 
honor  to  present." 

He  stopped  with  a  sigh  of  content,  and  we 
all  breathed  again.  Jimmy  dropped  his  hat 
and  held  out  the  box  with  its  roll  of  signa- 
tures. The  President  fingered  it,  turning  the 
roll  over  as  he  asked  the  Secretary  of  State  to 
explain. 

Secretary  Reitz  took  out  the  message,  which 

151 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

was  written  in  English  and  in  Dutch,  and,  as 
he  did  not  see  the  Dutch  version,  translated 
the  one  in  English. 

The  message  set  forth  that  it  was  fitting 
that  the  children  of  the  city  which  had  first  de- 
clared for  independence  against  Great  Britain 
should  send  a  greeting  of  sympathy  to  the 
leader  of  the  people  who  were  in  their  turn 
fighting  for  their  independence  against  the 
same  nation. 

President  Kruger  nodded  solemnly,  mutter- 
ing his  approval,  and  was  about  to  make  a 
speech  of  thanks  in  return  when  Mr.  Suther- 
land, who  had  accompanied  Jimmy  Smith  as 
guide,  philosopher,  and  friend,  whispered  to 
Mr.  Reitz  that  he  also  had  something  to  pre- 
sent. 

Mr.  Sutherland's  gift  was  a  large  and  richly 
decorated  album,  containing  a  history  of  the 
Boer  war  made  up  from  newspaper  clip- 
pings, caricatures,  and  pictures  and  photo- 
graphs. It  was  incased  in  a  huge  leather 
trunklike  box,  with  a  lid  fastened  by  a  lock 
and  two  clasps. 

Mr.  Sutherland  lowered  the  box  to  the  floor 

at  the  feet  of  the   President,  and  without  the 

152 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

ceremony  of  another  speech  attempted  to  open 
the  lid.  The  box  looked  like  a  large  dress- 
suit  case,  and  as  no  one  had  been  told  what  it 
contained,  the  interest  of  all  was  deeply  en- 
gaged. The  President  stepped  back  gingerly 
and  surveyed  it  with  an  expression  of  some 
misgiving.  He  looked  as  though  he  were  in 
doubt  as  to  whether  it  might  be  a  service  of 
silver-plate  or  an  infernal  machine. 

In  the  meanwhile  we  had  all  become  pain- 
fully conscious  of  the  fact  that  Sutherland  was 
having  trouble  with  the  lid.  There  was  not 
enough  time  in  which  to  have  trouble  with 
the  lid,  for,  as  it  was,  Jimmy  Smith's  audi- 
ence had  been  snatched  from  the  momen- 
tous minutes  of  a  war  council,  and  the  Presi- 
dent's horses,  which  were  to  carry  him  from 
his  home,  were  standing  already  ''  inspanned  " 
in  his  stable. 

A  full  knowledge  of  this  made  Mr.  Suther- 
land blush  crimson  in  embarrassment.  He 
breathed  quickly,  and  as  he  struggled  with  the 
lock  the  perspiration  flowed  from  his  fore- 
head. There  was  an  eager  and  excited  chorus 
of  whispered  suggestions  and  advice.  Moved 
with  sympathy.  Secretary  Reitz  and  Mr.  Gob- 

153 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

ler,  the  Secretary  of  War,  sank  to  their  knees 
beside  Mr.  Sutherland  and  all  three  pulled  and 
pried  violently  at  the  obdurate  lid. 

Mr.  James  Archibald,  the  war  correspondent, 
who  is  never  at  a  loss,  felt  hurriedly  in  his 
pocket  for  a  knife,  and  finding  none,  produced 
a  half-crown,  with  which  he  endeavored  to  pick 
the  lock.  But  the  half-crown  proved  inade- 
quate when  used  as  a  burglar's  jimmy,  and  the 
lock  remained  intact  and  immovable.  The 
Secretary  of  War  had  been  holding  his  hat,  but 
finding  that  in  his  efforts  he  needed  both  his 
hands  he  mechanically  placed  it  on  the  back  of 
his  head.  Mr.  Reitz  saw  this,  and  under  cover 
of  the  general  perturbation  v/hispered  to  him 
anxiously  to  take  it  off. 

In  the  meantime  President  Kruger's  inter- 
est in  the  mysterious  box  had  increased  greatly, 
and  he  came  forward  and  bent  over  his  two 
secretaries  with  his  hands  on  his  knees,  peering 
down  at  the  lock  with  absolute  lack  of  self-con- 
sciousness. 

It  was  another  happy  thought  of  Archibald, 
who  is  ever  calm  and  collected,  even  when  the 
bullets  fly,  that  relieved  a  situation  which  was 
rapidly  becoming  tragic. 

154 


PRESIDENT   KRUGER 

"  Sutherland,"  Archibald  whispered,  hoarsely, 
"  haven't  you  got  a  key  ?  " 

**  A  what  ?  "  gasped  Sutherland,  looking  up. 
"  A  key  ?     Yes." 

*'  Then  use  it !  "  commanded  the  war  corre- 
spondent, sternly. 

Sutherland  produced  the  key,  turned  the  lock, 
and  opened  the  lid.  For  the  second  time  every- 
one in  the  room  breathed  freely.  President 
Kruger  pushed  forward  and  peered  down  at  the 
great  gold  and  vellum  album  in  its  leather  case. 
He  straightened  himself  with  a  pleased  sigh 
and  smiled  at  Sutherland,  nodding  at  him  ap- 
provingly. 

"  It  is  a  Bible,"  he  said. 

The  mistake  was  so  in  character  that  as  we 
grasped  it  and  heard  the  simple  note  of  real 
pleasure  in  his  voice  I  believe  every  man  in  the 
room  would  have  given  half  a  month's  wages 
to  have  changed  that  album  into  what  Kruger 
believed  it  to  be. 

**  No  ;  a  history  of  the  war,"  Reitz  exclaimed, 
hastily,  turning  over  the  pages  and  showing  the 
President  pictures  of  himself,  of  Boer  laagers, 
and  of  his  generals.  But  the  President  shook  his 
head  and  closed  the  big  volume.    He  beckoned 

i5b 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

to  General  Meyer,  who  had  been  impatiently 
waiting. 

*'  Tell  them  I  thank  them,"  he  said  to  Reitz. 
*'  Tell  them  I  am  much  obliged  for  the  message 
and  for  the  history.     They  must  go  now." 

He  held  out  his  hand  again  to  Jimmy  Smith 
and  Sutherland,  the  last  Americans  to  shake  it 
before  he  went  out  into  the  mountains. 

That  was  my  last  sight  of  President  Kruger. 


156 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    ENGLISH    PRISONERS 

STRANGELY  enough,  the  chief  sign  of 
war  in  Pretoria  is  not  shown  by  the  Boers 
themselves,  but  in  the  presence  at  the  capital  of 
the  English  prisoners.  Every  night  when  the 
town  is  hidden  in  darkness  there  arise  from 
outside  its  narrow  boundaries  the  two  great 
circles  of  electric  lights  which  shine  down  upon 
the  Pretoria  race-course  and  the  camp  of  the 
British  officers.  When  you  drive  home  from 
some  dinner,  w^hen  you  bid  the  visitor  *'  good- 
night," and  turn  for  a  look  at  the  sleeping 
town,  the  last  things  that  meet  your  eyes  are 
these  blazing,  vigilant  policemen's  lanterns, 
making  for  the  prisoner  an  endless  day,  point- 
ing out  his  every  movement,  showing  him  in  a 
shameless  glare. 

When  the  first  of  the  prisoners  began  to 
arrive  at  the  capital  they  were  placed  in  the 
Pretoria  race-course,  which  had  also  been  the 

157 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

temporary  home  of  the  Jameson  Raiders ; 
but  later  the  officers  were  moved  into  the  resi- 
dential quarter  of  the  town,  which  is  a  pretty 
suburb  called  Sunnyside. 

There  they  were  given  accommodations  in 
the  Model  School  House,  until  for  several 
reasons  they  again  were  moved,  this  time  into 
a  camp  especially  prepared  for  them  on  the  side 
of  a  hill,  at  the  opposite  edge  of  the  town.  In 
the  meanwhile  the  number  of  captured  Tom- 
mies had  increased  to  such  proportions  that 
they  were  taken  several  miles  from  the  city  to 
an  immense  camp  at  Waterval,  and  the  race- 
course was  reserved  for  civil  prisoners  and  a 
hospital  for  those  who  were  sick  or  wounded. 

The  officers  were  very  comfortable  at  the 
Model  School  House,  and  in  comparison  with 
what  the  camp  offers  them  the  change  was  for 
the  worse.  The  school-house  is  just  what  its 
name  suggests,  a  model  school,  with  high,  well- 
ventilated,  well-lighted  rooms,  broad  halls,  and, 
what  must  have  been  particularly  welcome  to  the 
Englishman,  a  perfectly  appointed  gymnasium 
and  a  good  lawn-tennis  court.  It  is  a  handsome 
building  outside,  and  when  the  officers  used  to 

sit  reading  and  smoking  on  its  broad  verandas, 

158 


THE   ENGLISH   PRISONERS 

one  might  have  mistaken  it  for  a  club.  They 
were  given  a  piano  and  all  the  books  and  writing- 
material  they  wanted,  they  could  see  the  calm 
life  of  Pretoria  passing  in  the  street  before 
them,  and,  on  the  whole,  were  exceedingly  well 
off.  It  is  the  tradition  of  many  wars  that  the 
generous  enemy  treats  his  prisoners  with  a  con- 
sideration equal  to  or  even  greater  than  that 
which  he  gives  to  his  own  men.  The  moment 
his  enemy  surrenders  he  becomes  his  guest, 
and  the  Boers  certainly  provided  much  better 
accommodations  for  the  officers  than  those  to 
which  their  own  men  are  accustomed  either  in 
the  field  or  at  home.  The  attitude  of  the  pris- 
oner to  his  enemy  should  be  no  less  courteous. 
But  the  British  officers,  in  their  contempt  for 
their  captors,  behaved  in  a  most  unsportsman- 
like, ungentlemanly,  and,  for  their  own  good,  a 
most  foolish  manner.  They  drew  offensive  car- 
icatures of  the  Boers  over  the  walls  of  the  school- 
house,  destroyed  the  children's  copy-books  and 
text-books,  which  certainly  was  a  silly  perform- 
ance, and  were  rude  and  ''cheeky"  to  the  Boer 
officials,  boasting  of  what  their  fellow-soldiers 
would  do  to  them  when  they  took  Pretoria. 
Their  chief  offence,  however,  was  in  speaking 

159 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

to  and  shouting  at  the  ladies  and  young  girls 
who  walked  past  the  school-house.  Personally, 
I  cannot  see  why  being  a  prisoner  would  make 
me  think  I  might  speak  to  women  I  did  not 
know ;  but  some  of  the  English  officers  appar- 
ently thought  their  new  condition  carried  that 
privilege  with  it.  I  do  not  believe  that  every 
one  of  them  misbehaved  in  this  fashion,  but  it 
was  true  of  so  many  that  their  misconduct 
brought  discredit  on  all.  Some  people  say  that 
the  young  girls  walked  by  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  being  spoken  to ;  and  a  few  undoubt- 
edly did,  and  one  of  them  was  even  arrested, 
after  the  escape  of  a  w^ell-known  war  corre- 
spondent, on  suspicion  of  having  assisted  him. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  any  number  of  older 
women,  both  Boer  and  English,  have  told  me 
that  they  found  it  quite  impossible  to  pass  the 
school-house  on  account  of  the  insulting  re- 
marks the  officers  on  the  veranda  threw  to  one 
another  concerning  them,  or  made  directly  to 
them.  At  last  the  officers  grew  so  offensive 
that  a  large  number  of  ladies  signed  a  petition 
and  sent  it  to  the  Government  complaining  that 
the  presence  of  the  Englishmen  in  the  heart  of 
the  tovv^n  was  a  public  nuisance.     It  was  partly 

i6o 


THE   ENGLISH   PRISONERS 

in  consequence  of  this,  and  more  probably  be- 
cause the  number  of  the  prisoners  had  increased 
so  greatly  that  there  was  no  longer  room  for 
them  in  the  school-house,  that  they  were  re- 
moved from  their  comfortable  quarters,  and 
sent  to  the  camp. 

When  I  went  to  see  them  there,  the  fact  that 
I  was  accompanied  by  a  Boer  officer  did  not  in 
the  least  deter  them  from  abusing  and  ridicul- 
ing his  countrymen  to  me  in  his  presence,  so 
that  what  little  service  I  had  planned  to  render 
them  was  made  impossible.  After  they  had 
sneered  and  jeered  at  the  Boer  official  in  my 
hearing,  I  could  not  very  well  turn  around  and 
ask  him  to  grant  them  favors.  It  was  a  great 
surprise  to  me.  I  had  thought  the  English 
officer  would  remain  an  officer  under  any  cir- 
cumstances. When  one  has  refused  to  fight 
further  with  a  rifle,  it  is  not  becoming  to  con- 
tinue the  fight  with  the  tongue,  nor  to  insult 
the  man  from  whom  you  have  begged  for 
mercy.  It  is  not,  as  Englishmen  say,  '*  playing 
the  game."  It  is  not  *' cricket."  You  cannot 
ask  a  man  to  spare  your  life,  which  is  what  sur- 
rendering really  means,  and  then  treat  him  as 
you  would  the  gutter-snipe  who  runs  to  open 

l6i 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

the  door  of  your  hansom.  Some  day  we  shall 
wake  up  to  the  fact  that  the  Englishman,  in 
spite  of  his  universal  reputation  to  the  contrary, 
is  not  a  good  sportsman  because  he  is  not  a 
good  loser.  As  Captain  Hanks  said  when 
someone  asked  him  what  he  thought  of  the 
Englishman  as  a  sportsman,  "  He  is  the  cheer- 
fulest  winner  I  ever  met." 

There  were  many  sober-minded  ones  among 
the  prisoners,  and  one  of  these  devoted  himself 
to  covering  the  walls  of  a  room  in  the  school- 
house  with  maps  of  Natal  and  of  the  Orange 
Free  State.  These  maps  were  so  remarkably 
well  executed  that  the  Director  of  the  school 
has  preserved  them  for  the  education  of  the 
children.  He  even  wrote  to  the  Government 
officials  asking  them  to  invite  the  officer  who 
had  made  the  maps  to  return  daily  from  the 
camp  and  complete  one  he  had  begun  of  the 
Transvaal.  I  told  the  officer  in  camp  of  this, 
and  he  was  much  amused  and  pleased,  and  said 
he  would  be  only  too  happy  to  oblige  them. 

The  escape  of  Winston  Churchill  also  helped 

toward  the  removal  of  the  officers  from  the 

centre  of  Sunnyside  to  a  more  secluded  spot, 

although  the  difficulty  of  the  escape  really  be- 

162 


THE   ENGLISH  PRISONERS 

gan  after  Churchill  was  clear  of  Pretoria.  His 
first  danger,  which  was  in  leaving  the  school- 
house,  was  removed  by  the  fact  that  when 
he  slipped  over  the  fence  the  sentry  was  look- 
ing the  other  way,  either  by  accident  or  *'  for 
revenue  only,"  as  is  variously  stated.  After 
Churchill  was  once  in  the  street  he  was  com- 
paratively safe,  as  there  were  so  many  strange 
uniforms  in  the  Boer  Army  that  a  man  in 
full  khaki  might  walk  through  the  streets  of 
Pretoria  unchallenged.  It  was  the  long  jour- 
ney through  the  country  which  made  the  leave- 
taking  of  Churchill,  and  later  of  three  brother 
officers,  remarkable. 

The  chances  of  escape  from  the  camp  are 
almost  impossible.  It  might  be  done,  however, 
by  tunnelling  under  the  fence,  or  by  cutting  the 
wires  of  the  tell-tale  electric  lights,  and,  after 
throwing  m^attresses  over  the  barbed-wire  en- 
tanglements, scrambling  over  them  into  the 
darkness.  If  this  were  done  at  many  different 
points  along  the  fence,  some  men  would  un- 
doubtedly get  away,  and  the  others  would  un- 
doubtedly be  shot. 

I  visited  the  camp  only  once  and  found  it 
infinitely  depressing.     The  officers  are  enclosed 

163 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

in  a  rectangular  barbed-wire  fencing  about  as 
high  as  a  man's  head  and  one  hundred  and  fifty 
yards  in  length,  and  about  fifty  yards  across  at 
either  end.  At  one  corner  of  this  is  a  double 
gate,  studded  with  barbed  wire  and  guarded  by 
turn-keys.  The  whole  is  a  sort  of  a  pen  into 
which  the  officers  are  herded  like  zebras  at  the 
zoo.  Innumerable  electric  lights  are  placed  at 
close  intervals  along  the  line  of  this  wire  fenc- 
ing, and  make  the  camp  as  brilliant  as  a  Fall 
River  boat  by  night.  There  is  not  a  corner  in 
it  in  which  one  could  not  read  fine  print.  In 
the  middle  of  the  enclosure  there  is  a  long 
corrugated-zinc  building  with  a  corrugated-zinc 
roof.  It  is  hot  by  day  and  cold  by  night  and 
is  badly  ventilated.  At  one  end  are  some  excel- 
lently arranged  bath-rooms  with  shower-baths, 
and  at  the  other  the  kitchen  and  mess-room. 
The  mess-room  is  as  bare  as  an  earth  floor,  deal 
tables  and  benches,  and  zinc  walls  can  make  it. 
In  the  sleeping  apartment  one  hundred  and 
forty-two  cots  are  placed  almost  touching  each 
other.  They  are  in  four  long  rows  with  two 
aisles  running  between.  There  is  no  flooring 
to  this  building,    but  slips  of  oil-cloth  stretch 

down  the  two  aisles.     In  between  the  cots  the 

164 


THE   ENGLISH   PRISONERS 

red  dust  settles  freely.  There  is,  of  course,  no 
possible  privacy,  although  some  of  the  men 
have  surrounded  their  beds  with  temporary 
screens,  and  the  wall  at  the  head  of  almost 
every  cot  is  covered  with  a  strip  of  blanket  or 
colored  cloth,  and  on  this  the  owner  of  the 
bed  has  pinned  pictures  from  the  illustrated 
weekly  papers.  It  makes  the  long  room  look 
less  like  a  barrack  than  the  children's  ward  of 
a  hospital.  If  one  can  decide  from  the  num- 
ber of  their  portraits,  the  Queen  and  Marie 
Studholme  seemed  to  be,  with  the  imprisoned 
officers,  the  most  popular  of  all  English  people, 
with  Lord  Roberts  a  close  third.  In  judging 
the  treatment  the  Boers  have  meted  out  to 
their  prisoners,  one  must  remember  that  the 
cots  in  the  zinc  shed,  the  mess-hall,  and  the 
bath-rooms  are  as  luxurious  as  anything  to 
which  the  majority  of  the  Boers  are  accus- 
tomed. We  must  take  his  point  of  view  as  to 
what  is  comfortable  and  luxurious,  not  that  of 
men  accustomed  to  White's  and  Bachelors'. 
It  is  also  to  be  considered  that  had  the  offi- 
cers been  decently  civil  to  the  Boers,  which 
need  not  have  been  difficult  for  gentlemen — 
for  I  have  never  met   an  uncivil   Boer — they 

165 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

might  have  been  treated  with  even  greater 
leniency. 

The  camp  seemed  to  me  worse  than  any 
prison  of  stone  and  iron  bars  that  I  have  ever 
visited,  because  it  showed  freedom  so  near  at 
hand.  The  great  hills,  the  red-roofed  houses, 
the  trees  by  the  spruit  which  runs  only  a  hun- 
dred yards  below  the  camp,  the  men  and 
women  passing  at  will  beyond  the  dead  line 
of  fifty  yards,  the  cattle  grazing,  the  clouds 
drifting  overhead,  all  seemed  to  tantalize  and 
mock  at  the  men,  who  are  not  shut  off  from  it 
by  a  blind  wall,  but  who  can  see  it  clearly 
through  the  open  cat's  cradle  of  tangled  wire. 

I  went  to  the  prison  with  Captain  Von 
Lossberg  of  the  Free  State  Artillery.  He 
himself  had  taken  several  prisoners  at  San- 
nahspost  and  was  returning  to  them  a  Bible 
and  two  prayer-books  which  he  had  found  in 
their  captured  kits  and  which  had  been  given 
to  these  officers  before  they  left  England  by 
their  children.  From  this  the  officers  could 
not  have  thought  that  he  had  come  to  gloat 
over  them,  and  the  fact  that  he  was  in  an 
equally  bad  plight  with  themselves,  with  his 
head  in  bandages  and  his  arm  in  a  sling  owing 

1 66 


THE   ENGLISH    PRISONERS 

to  their  shrapnel  and  Lee-Metfords,  might 
have  appealed  to  them  in  his  favor.  But  in 
spite  of  his  reason  for  coming,  one  of  them 
was  so  exceedingly  insulting  to  him  that  Von 
Lossberg  told  the  man  that  if  he  had  him  on 
the  outside  of  the  barbed  wire  he  would  thrash 
him.  His  brother  officers  ordered  the  fellow 
to  be  quiet  and  hustled  him  away. 

I  was  surprised  to  find  that  the  habitual  de- 
sire of  the  Englishman  to  be  left  severely  to 
himself  did  not  follow  him  into  prison.  I  had 
expected  that  I  should  walk  around  with  the 
Boer  officer,  w^ho  was  sent  with  me  to  see  that 
I  did  not  say  anything  to  the  officers  which  I 
should  not,  in  as  lonely  state  as  though  I  wore 
a  cloak  of  invisibility.  On  the  contrary,  almost 
all  of  the  prisoners  came  up  at  once  and  gazed 
and  asked  questions.  Their  eagerness  over  the 
slight  variety  which  our  coming  brought  to 
the  awful  routine  of  the  prison  camp,  their  de- 
sire to  learn  some  new  thing,  to  get  a  fresh 
whiff  of  knowledge  from  the  outside  world, 
was  so  pathetic  and  disturbing  that  I  do  not 
know  that  I  ever  spent  a  more  uncomfortable 
hour.     The  Commission  on  Prisoners  do  not 

allow  the  officers  to  hear  any  news  of  the  war 

167 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

except  as  it  is  misrepresented  in  the  Volksstem, 
a  single  sheet  of  no  value.  It  is  a  foolish  and 
unnecessarily  hard  restriction,  but  as  it  exists 
I  had  to  obey  it  and  was  not  able  to  tell  the 
officers  anything  that  they  cared  to  know. 
Some  of  them  played  the  game  most  consid- 
erately, appreciating  that  I  could  not  answer 
certain  questions ;  but  others,  when  I  did  not 
answer,  or  pretended  not  to  hear,  abused  the 
Boers  violently,  which  made  it  most  unpleas- 
ant for  the  Boer  officer  with  me,  and  did  not 
help  to  make  me  more  loquacious.  But  these 
men  were  the  exception.  The  majority  were 
only  too  glad  to  gain  any  information  from 
outside  without  wasting  time  abusing  anybody. 
Before  the  electric  lights  were  lit  we  stood 
outside  the  zinc  shed  near  the  gate,  and  as  it 
grew  dark  they  separated  me  from  my  Boer 
guide  and  crowded  in  closer,  so  that  in  the 
dusk  I  could  only  see  vague  outlines  of  figures 
and  hear  voices  whispering  questions  without 
seeing  from  where  they  came.  Those  nearest 
me,  under  cover  of  these  voices  from  the  out- 
side circles,  pressed  me  for  some  word  as  to 
the  chance  of  their  release,  the  probable  length 
of  their  imprisonment,  the  nearness  of  the  at- 

i68 


> 


be- 


aa 


THE   ENGLISH   PRISONERS 

tacking  column,  and  the  safety  of  friends  and 
relatives.  They  were  so  little  of  the  class 
with  which  one  connects  imprisonment,  their 
voices  were  so  strongly  reminiscent  of  the 
London  clubs,  the  Savoy,  and  the  Gaiety,  and 
so  strange  in  this  cattle-pen,  that  one  felt 
supremely  selfish,  and,  when  going  away,  both 
mean  and  apologetic.  The  fact  of  being  able 
to  pass  the  barbed  wire  while  they  still  stood 
watching  one,  seemed  like  flaunting  one's  own 
good-fortune  and  freedom. 

What  I  liked  best  about  them  was  their 
genuine  and  keen  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the 
Tommies  of  their  several  commands  who  were 
imprisoned  at  Waterval. 

'*  Is  it  true  they're  sleeping  on  the  ground  ?" 
they  whispered.  ''  Do  you  know  if  they  have 
decent  medicines  ? "  ''  Do  they  get  their 
money?"  ''Won't  you  go  and  see  them,  and 
tell  us  how  they  are  ? " 

It  was  good  to  find  that  most  of  them  suf- 
fered for  their  men  even  more  keenly,  because 
unselfishly,  than  for  themselves.  For  these  I 
wished  to  do  anything  which  might  help  the 
dreary  torture  of  the  camp,  but  in  what  I  tried 

to  do  I  was  unsuccessful. 

169 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

They  form  the  most  picturesque,  the  most 
painful,  and,  as  I  have  said,  the  only  war-like 
feature  of  Pretoria.  For  nights  after  my  visit 
to  them  I  was  haunted  by  the  presence  of  that 
crowd  pressing  close  and  whispering  questions, 
speaking  eagerly  far  back  in  the  darkness. 
"  Can  you  tell  me  was  General  Hilyard 
wounded  at  Pieters  ?  He  is  my  father."  ''  Is 
it  true  my  brother  was  shot  at  Spion  Kop  ? 
He  was  with  Thorneycroft."  '*  Do  my  peo- 
ple know  I  am  here  ?  "  "  Will  you  tell  Hay  I 
must  see  him  ?  "  ''  Will  you  cable  my  people 
that  I  am  all  right  ?  "  ''Do  the  papers  blame 
us  for  surrendering  ?  It  was  not  the  colonel's 
fault  that  we  had  no  outposts  ! " 

In  the  dusk,  they  were  like  a  chorus  of 
ghosts,  of  imprisoned  spirits,  of  **  poor  little 
lambs  who  had  lost  their  way,"  and  who, 
caged  on  the  side  of  a  Boer  kopje,  were  try- 
ing to  get  back  into  the  fold  of  the  great 
world  again.  : 


170 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    NIGHT    BEFORE    THE    BATTLE 

THE  night  we  started  for  "the  front,"  the 
front  was  at  Brandfort,  but  before  our 
train  drew  out  of  Pretoria  Station  the  arrivals 
from  Johannesburg  told  us  that  the  English 
had  just  occupied  Brandfort,  and  that  the  front 
had  been  pushed  back  to  Winburg. 

Captain  Von  Lossberg  of  the  Lossberg  Ar- 
tillery, who  was  guiding  me  through  the  Free 
State,  explained  that  Brandfort  was  an  im- 
possible position  to  hold  anyway,  and  that  we 
had  better  leave  the  train  at  Winburg.  We 
found  some  selfish  consolation  for  the  Boer 
repulse  in  the  fact  that  it  shortened  our  rail- 
road journey  by  one  day.  The  next  morning 
when  we  awoke  at  the  Vaal  River  Station 
the  train-despatcher  informed  us  that  during 
the  night  the  ''Rooineks"  had  taken  Win- 
burg and  that  the  burghers  were  gathered  at 
Smaaldel. 

We  agreed  not  to  go  to  Winburg,  but  to 

171 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

stop  off  at  Smaaldel.  We  also  agreed  that  the 
British  advance  was  only  what  might  have 
been  expected,  and  that  Winburg  was  an  im- 
possible position  to  hold.  When  at  eleven 
o'clock  the  train  reached  Kroonstad,  we  learned 
that  Lord  Roberts  was  in  Smaaldel.  It  was 
then  evident  that  if  our  train  kept  on  and  the 
British  army  kept  on  there  would  be  a  colli- 
sion, so  we  stopped  at  Kroonstad.  In  talking 
it  over  we  decided,  that  owing  to  its  situation, 
Smaaldel  was  an  impossible  position  to  hold. 

Kroonstad  is  like  most  of  the  towns  and  small 
cities  of  South  Africa,  unfinished,  very  much 
out  of  doors,  unhomelike.  They  all  bear  the 
same  resemblance  to  the  towns  on  our  eastern 
seaboard  which  a  barb-wire  fence  bears  to  the 
gray  lichen-covered  stone  walls  of  New  Eng- 
land, or  to  the  thick  flower-scented  hedges  of 
old  England.  Personally,  I  cannot  under- 
stand why  the  South  African  colonial  should 
prefer  a  barb-wire  fence  and  all  that  it  entails, 
to  a  stone  fence  or  a  hedge  and  all  that  goes 
with  them.  But  then  it  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand the  point  of  view  of  the  South  African 
colonial  on  any  subject. 

At  the  time  of  our  arrival  Kroonstad  was 

172 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

the  capital,  '*  once  removed,"  where,  after  its 
eviction  from  Bloemfontein,  the  Government 
had  set  up  housekeeping,  and  its  head-quarters 
were  situated  in  Hermann's  Hotel,  which 
it  had  *'  commandeered."  But  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  everyone  in  the  Government  service 
was  balanced  on  one  foot  and  poised  for 
instant  flight,  he  attended  to  his  duties  as  calmly 
and  discreetly  as  though  he  were  the  perpetual 
secretary  of  the  French  Institute.  In  what 
had  been  the  public  rooms  of  the  hotel  were 
huge  heaps  of  official  documents,  requisition 
papers,  orders  to  commandoes,  passports,  proc- 
lamations, and  Government  notices,  and  in 
strange  contrast  to  these  were  the  furnishings 
and  decorations  of  the  hotel  itself — the  tariff 
of  meals,  the  rules  for  billiards,  and  the  illus- 
trated advertisements  of  ales.  Cape  wines,  and 
Scotch  whiskies,  and  the  gaudy  chromos  of 
the  imperial  family  of  Germany  and  of  the 
Queen  of  Holland. 

The  Sand  River,  which  runs  about  forty 
miles  south  of  Kroonstad,  was  the  last  place  in 
the  Free  State  at  which  the  burghers  could  hope 
to  make  a  stand,  and  at  the  bridge  where  the 
railroad  spans  the  river,  and  at  a  drift  ten  miles 

173 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

lower  down,  the  Boers  and  Free  Staters  had 
collected  to  the  number  of  four  thousand. 
Lord  Roberts  and  his  advancing  column,  which 
was  known  to  contain  35,000  men,  were  a  few 
miles  distant  from  the  opposite  bank  of  the 
Sand  River.  There  was  an  equal  chance  that 
Lord  Roberts  would  attempt  to  cross  at  the 
drift  over  at  the  bridge.  But  as  Von  Loss- 
berg's  Artillery  was  at  the  drift  we  had  no 
choice  but  to  go  there.  We  stopped  on  our 
way  for  the  night  at  Ventersburg,  a  town  ten 
miles  from  the  river. 

Von  Lossberg  is  a  young  naturalized  Ameri- 
can who  was  formerly  an  officer  in  the  German 
Emperor's  Second  Guard  Regiment.  He  served 
in  Cuba  as  an  officer  of  one  of  the  Louisiana 
regiments,  and  when  the  war  broke  out  in  South 
Africa  volunteered  for  service  there  with  the 
Free  State.  At  DeVetsburg  he  was  wounded 
in  the  head  with  four  pieces  of  shrapnel,  and  his 
men,  thinking  he  was  killed,  started  to  run 
away,  but  he  caught  a  pony  and,  wounded  as 
he  was,  rode  after  them  and  brought  them 
back.  He  continued  to  serve  his  guns  until 
an  hour  later,  when  he  was  shot  through  the 
ribs  and  one  arm  with  a  bullet.     He  then  with- 

174 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

drew  his  battery  in  good  order  and  rode  twelve 
miles  with  the  ends  of  the  broken  rib  rubbing 
together.  In  spite  of  this  severe  knocking 
about,  when  he  returned  with  me  to  the  Sand 
River  he  had  been  absent  from  his  battery- 
only  a  little  over  two  weeks.  When  we  met 
President  Steyn  on  the  road  to  the  river,  the 
President  put  his  hand  on  Lossberg's  shoulder 
and  said  :  **  This  is  an  American  you  should 
be  proud  of.  We  certainly  are."  It  must 
have  been  on  the  strength  of  that  that  Loss- 
berg  commandeered  the  President's  field-glasses 
from  off  his  shoulder,  explaining  that  they 
would  be  of  more  use  to  his  gunners  than  to  a 
fugitive  President. 

Ventersburg,  in  comparison  with  Kroonstad, 
where  we  had  left  them  rounding  up  stray 
burghers  and  hurrying  them  to  the  front,  and 
burning  official  documents  in  the  streets,  was 
calm. 

Ventersburg  was  not  destroying  incriminat- 
ing documents  nor  driving  weary  burghers  from 
its  solitary  street.  It  was  making  them  welcome 
at  Jones's  Hotel.  The  sun  had  sunk  an  angry 
crimson,  the  sure  sign,  so  they  said,  of  a  bloody 
battle  on  the  morrow,  and   a  full  moon   had 

175 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

turned  the  dusty  street  and  the  veldt  into  which 
it  disappeared  into  a  field  of  snow. 

The  American  scouts  had  halted  at  Jones's 
Hotel,  and  the  American  proprietor  was  giving 
them  drinks  free.  Their  cowboy  spurs  jingled 
on  the  floor  of  the  bar-room,  on  the  boards  of 
the  verandas,  on  the  stone  floor  of  the  kitchen 
and  in  the  billiard-room,  where  they  were  play- 
ing pool  as  joyously  as  though  the  English 
were  not  ten  miles  away.  Grave,  awkward 
burghers  rode  up,  each  in  a  cloud  of  dust,  and 
leaving  his  pony  to  wander  in  the  street  and 
his  rifle  in  a  corner,  shook  hands  with  every- 
one solemnly  and  asked  for  coffee.  Italians 
of  Garibaldi's  red-shirted  army,  Swedes  and 
Danes  in  semi-uniform.  Frenchmen  in  high 
boots  and  great  sombreros,  Germans  with  the 
sabre  cuts  on  their  cheeks  that  had  been  given 
them  at  the  university,  and  Russian  officers 
smoking  tiny  cigarettes,  crowded  the  little  din- 
ing-room, and  by  the  light  of  a  smoky  lamp 
talked  in  many  tongues  of  Spion  Kop,  San- 
nahspost.  Fourteen  Streams,  and  the  battle  on 
the  morrow. 

They  were  sun-tanned,  dusty,  stained,  and 

many  of  them  with  wounds  in  bandages.    They 

176 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

came  from  every  capital  of  Europe,  and  as  each 
took  his  turn  around  the  crowded  table,  they 
drank  to  the  health  of  every  nation,  save  one. 
When  they  had  eaten  they  picked  up  the  pony's 
bridle  from  the  dust  and  melted  into  the  moon- 
light with  a  wave  of  the  hand  and  a  ''  good 
luck  to  you."  There  were  no  bugles  to  sound 
"  boots  and  saddles"  for  them,  no  sergeants  to 
keep  them  in  hand,  no  officers  to  pay  for  their 
rations  and  issue  orders. 

Each  was  his  own  officer,  his  conscience  was 
his  bugle-call,  he  gave  himself  orders.  They 
were  all  equal,  all  friends  ;  the  cowboy  and  the 
Russian  Prince,  the  French  socialist  from  La 
Villette  or  Montmartre,  with  a  red  sash  around 
his  velveteen  breeches,  and  the  little  French 
nobleman  from  the  Cercle  Royal  who  had 
never  before  felt  the  sun,  except  when  he  had 
played  lawn  tennis  on  the  Isle  de  Puteaux. 
Each  had  his  bandolier  and  rifle ;  each  was 
minding  his  own  business,  which  was  the  busi- 
ness of  all — to  try  and  save  the  independence 
of  a  free  people. 

The  presence  of  these  foreigners,  with  rifle 

in  hand,  showed  the  sentiment  and  sympathies 

of  the  countries  from  which  they  came.    These 

177 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

men  were  Europe's  real  ambassadors  to  the 
Republic  of  the  Transvaal.  The  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  their  countrymen  who  had  re- 
mained at  home  held  toward  the  Boer  the  same 
feelings  they  did,  but  they  were  not  so  strongly 
moved  toward  him ;  not  strongly  enough  to 
feel  that  they  must  go  abroad  to  fight  for  him. 

These  foreigners  were  not  the  exception  in 
opinion,  they  were  only  exceptionally  adven- 
turous and  liberty-loving.  They  were  not 
soldiers  of  fortune,  for  the  soldier  of  fortune 
fights  for  gain.  These  men  receive  no  pay,  no 
emolument  nor  reward.  They  were  the  few 
who  dared  do  what  the  majority  of  their  coun-. 
trymen  in  Europe  thought. 

At  Jones's  Hotel  that  night,  at  Venters- 
burg,  it  was  as  though  a  jury  composed  of 
men  from  all  of  Europe  and  the  United  States 
had  gathered  in  judgment  on  the  British  na- 
tion, and  had  found  it  guilty  of  ''  murder  with 
intent  to  rob." 

Outside  in  the  moonlight  in  the  dusty  road 
two  bearded  burghers  had  halted  me  to  ask 
the  way  to  the  house  of  the  commandant. 
Between  them   on    a  Boer  pony    sat  a  man, 

erect,  slim-waisted,  w^ith  well-set  shoulders  and 

178 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

chin  in  air,  one  hand  holding  the  reins  high, 
the  other  with  knuckles  down  resting  on  his 
hip.  The  Boer  pony  he  rode,  nor  the  moon- 
light, nor  the  veldt  behind  him,  could  disguise 
his  seat  and  pose.  It  was  as  though  I  had 
been  suddenly  thrown  back  into  London  and 
was  passing  the  cuirassed,  gauntleted  guards- 
man, motionless  on  his  black  charger  in  the 
sentry  gate  in  Whitehall.  Only  now,  instead 
of  a  steel  breast-plate,  he  shivered  through  his 
thin  khaki,  and  instead  of  the  high  boots,  his 
legs  were  wrapped  in  twisted  putties. 

*'  When  did  they  take  you  ? "  I  asked. 

**  Early  this  morning.  I  was  out  scouting," 
he  said.  He  spoke  in  so  well  trained  and 
modulated  a  voice  that  I  tried  to  see  his  shoul- 
der-straps. 

*'  Oh,  you  are  an  officer  ?  "  I  said. 

"  No,  sir,  a  trooper.     First  Life  Guards." 

But  in  the  moonlight  I  could  see  him  smile, 
whether  at  my  mistake  or  because  it  was  not 
a  mistake  I  could  not  guess.  There  are  many 
gentlemen  rankers  in  this  war. 

He  made  a  lonely  figure  in  the  night,  his 

helmet  marking  him  as  conspicuously  as  a  man 

wearing  a  high  hat  in  a  church.      From  the 

179 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

billiard-room,  where  the  American  scouts  were 
playing  pool,  came  the  click  of  the  ivory  and 
loud,  light-hearted  laughter  ;  from  the  veran- 
da the  sputtering  of  many  strange  tongues 
and  the  deep,  lazy  voices  of  the  Boers.  There 
were  Boers  to  the  left  of  him,  Boers  to  the 
right  of  him,  pulling  at  their  long,  drooping 
pipes  and  sending  up  big  rings  of  white  smoke 
in  the  white  moonlight. 

He  dismounted,  and  stood  watching  the 
crowd  about  him  under  half-lowered  eyelids, 
but  as  unmoved  as  though  he  saw  no  one. 
He  threw  his  arm  over  the  pony's  neck  and 
pulled  its  head  down  against  his  chest  and  be- 
gan talking  to  it. 

It  was  as  though  he  wished  to  emphasize  his 
loneliness. 

*'  You  are  not  tired,  are  you  ?  No,  you're 
not,"  he  said.  His  voice  was  as  kindly  as 
though  he  were  speaking  to  a  child. 

'*Oh,  but  you  can't  be  tired.  What?"  he 
whispered.  ''  A  little  hungry,  perhaps.  Yes  ?  " 
He  seemed  to  draw  much  comfort  from  his 
friend  the  pony,  and  the  pony  rubbed  his  head 
against  the  Englishman's  shoulder. 

**  The   commandant   says   he   will    question 

i8o 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

you  some  in  the  morning.  You  will  come 
with  us  to  the  jail  now,"  his  captor  directed. 
*'  You  will  find  three  of  your  people  there  to 
talk  to.  I  will  go  bring  a  blanket  for  you,  it 
is  getting  cold."  And  they  rode  off  together 
into  the  night. 

Had  he  arrived  two  days  later  he  would 
have  heard  through  the  windows  of  Jones's 
Hotel  the  billiard  balls  still  clicking  joyously, 
but  the  men  who  held  the  cues  then  would 
have  been  officers  in  helmets  like  his  own. 

The  original  Jones,  the  proprietor  of  Jones's 
Hotel,  had  fled  when  the  war  began.  The 
man  who  succeeded  him  was  also  a  refugee, 
and  the  present  manager  was  an  American 
from  Cincinnati.  He  had  never  before  kept  a 
hotel,  but  he  said  it  was  not  a  bad  business,  as 
he  found  that  one  made  a  profit  of  a  hundred 
per  cent,  on  each  drink  sold.  The  proprietress 
was  a  lady  from  Brooklyn  ;  her  husband,  an- 
other American,  was  a  prisoner  with  Cronje  at 
St.  Helena.  She  was  in  considerable  doubt  as 
to  whether  she  ought  to  run  before  the  British 
arrived  or  wai-t  and  chance  being  made  a  pris- 
oner. She  said  she  would  prefer  to  escape, 
but  what  with  standing  on  her  feet  all  day  in 

i8i 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

the  kitchen  preparing  meals  for  hungry  burgh- 
ers and  foreign  volunteers,  she  was  too  tired  to 
get  away. 

War  close  at  hand  consists  so  largely  of 
commonplaces  and  trivial  details  that  I  hope  I 
may  be  pardoned  for  recording  the  anxieties 
and  cares  of  this  lady  from  Brooklyn,  her 
point  of  view  so  admirably  illustrates  one  side 
of  war.  It  is  only  when  you  are  ten  years 
away  from  it,  or  ten  thousand  miles  away  from 
it,  that  you  forget  the  waste  places  and  only 
the  moments  loom  up  which  are  terrible,  pict- 
uresque, and  momentous.  We  have  read,  in 
**  Vanity  Fair,"  and  lately  seen  in  a  play,  some- 
thing of  the  terror  and  the  mad  haste  to  escape 
of  the  people  of  Brussels  on  the  eve  of  Water- 
loo.    That  is  the  obvious  and  dramatic  side. 

That  is  the  picture  of  war  you  will  remem- 
ber and  which  people  prefer.  They  like  the 
rumble  of  cannon  through  the  streets  of  Ven- 
tersburg,  the  silent,  dusty  columns  of  the  rein- 
forcements passing  in  the  moonlight,  the  gal- 
loping hoofs  of  the  aides  suddenly  beating 
upon  the  night  air  and  growing  fainter  and  dy- 
ing away,  the  bugle-calls  from  the  camps  along 

the  river,  the  stamp  of  spurred  boots  as  the 

182 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

general  himself  enters  the  hotel  and  spreads  the 
blue-print  maps  upon  the  table,  the  clanking 
sabres  of  his  staff,  standing  behind  him  in  the 
candle-light,  whispering  and  tugging  at  their 
gauntlets  while  the  great  man  plans  his  attack. 
You  must  stop  with  the  British  Army  if  you 
want  bugle-calls  and  clanking  sabres  and  gaunt- 
lets. They  are  a  part  of  the  panoply  of  war  and 
of  warriors.  But  we  saw  no  warriors  at  Ven- 
tersburg  that  night,  only  a  few  cattle-breeders 
and  farmers  who  were  fighting  for  the  land  they 
had  won  from  the  lion  and  the  bushman,  and 
with  them  a  mixed  company  of  gentleman  ad- 
venturers— gathered  around  a  table  discussing 
other  days  in  other  lands.  The  picture  of  war 
which  is  most  familiar  is  the  one  of  the  people 
of  Brussels  fleeing  from  the  city  with  the 
French  guns  booming  in  the  distance,  or  as 
one  sees  it  in  ''  Shenandoah,"  where  aids  gallop 
on  and  off  the  stage  and  the  night  signals  flash 
from  both  sides  of  the  valley.  That  is  the  ob- 
vious and  dramatic  side  ;  the  other  side  of  war 
is  the  night  before  the  battle,  at  Jones's  Hotel ; 
the  landlady  in  the  dining-room  with  her  elbows 
on  the  table,  fretfully  deciding  that  after  a 
day  in  front  of  the  cooking-stove  she  is  too 

183 


WITH   BOTH    ARMIES 

tired  to  escape  an  invading  army,  declaring 
that  the  one  place  at  which  she  would  rather 
be  at  that  moment  was  Green's  restaurant  in 
Philadelphia,  the  heated  argument  that  imme- 
diately follows  between  the  foreign  legion  and 
the  Americans  as  to  whether  Rector's  is  not 
better  than  the  Cafe  de  Paris,  and  the  general 
agreement  that  Ritz  cannot  hope  to  run  two 
hotels  in  London  without  being  robbed.  That 
is  how  the  men  talked  and  acted  on  the  eve  of 
a  battle.  We  heard  no  galloping  aids,  no 
clanking  spurs,  only  the  click  of  the  clipped 
billiard  balls  as  the  American  scouts  (who  were 
killed  thirty-six  hours  later)  knocked  them 
about  over  the  torn  billiard-cloth,  the  drip, 
drip,  of  the  kerosene  from  a  blazing,  sweating 
lamp,  which  struck  the  dirty  table-cloth  with 
the  regular  ticking  of  a  hall-clock,  and  the 
complaint  of  the  piano  from  the  hotel  parlor, 
where  the  correspondent  of  a  Boston  paper  was 
picking  out  "  Hello,  My  Baby,"  laboriously 
with  one  finger.  War  is  not  so  terribly  dra- 
matic or  exciting — at  the  time  ;  and  the  real 
trials  of  war — at  the  time,  and  not  as  one  later 
remembers  them — consist  so  largely  in  looting 

fodder  for  your  ponies  and  in  bribing  the  sta- 

184 


THE  NIGHT  BEFORE  THE  BATTLE 

tion  hands  to  put  on  an  open  truck  in  which  to 
carry  them. 

We  were  wakened  about  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  by  a  loud  knocking  on  a  door,  and 
the  distracted  voice  of  the  local  justice  of  the 
peace  calling  upon  the  landlord  to  rouse  him- 
self and  fly.  The  English,  so  the  voice  in- 
formed the  various  guests,  as  door  after  door 
was  thrown  open  upon  the  court-yard,  were  at 
Ventersburg  station,  only  two  hours  away. 
The  justice  of  the  peace  wanted  to  buy  or  to 
borrow  a  horse,  and  wanted  it  very  badly,  but 
a  sleepy-eyed  and  sceptical  audience  told  him 
unfeelingly  that  he  was  either  drunk  or  dream- 
ing, and  only  the  landlady,  now  apparently  re- 
freshed after  her  labors,  was  keenly,  even  hys- 
terically, intent  on  instant  flight.  She  sat  up 
in  her  bed  with  her  hair  in  curl  papers  and  a 
revolver  beside  her,  and  through  her  open  door 
shouted  advice  to  her  lodgers.  But  they  were 
unsympathetic,  and  reassured  her  only  by 
banging  their  doors  and  retiring  with  profane 
grumbling,  until  in  a  few  moments  only  the 
voice  of  the  justice  as  he  fled  down  the  main 
street  of  Ventersburg  offering  his  kingdom  for 

a  horse  broke  the  silence  of  the  night. 

185 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    BATTLE    OF    SAND    RIVER 

THE  next  morning  we  rode  out  to  the  Sand 
River  to  see  the  Boer  positions  near  the 
drift,  and  met  President  Steyn  in  his  Cape  cart 
coming  from  them  on  his  way  to  the  bridge. 
Ever  since  the  occupation  of  Bloemfontein, 
the  London  papers  had  been  speaking  of  him 
as  **  the  late  President,"  as  though  he  were 
dead.  He  impressed  me,  on  the  contrary,  as 
being  very  much  alive  and  very  much  the 
President,  although  his  executive  chamber  was 
the  dancing-hall  of  a  hotel  and  his  roof-tree 
the  hood  of  a  Cape  cart.  He  stood  in  the 
middle  of  the  road,  and  talked  hopefully  of  the 
morrow.  He  had  been  waiting,  he  said,  to  see 
the  development  of  the  enemy's  attack,  but  the 
British  had  not  appeared,  and,  as  he  believed 
they  would  not  advance  that  day,  he  was  going 
on  to  the  bridge  to  talk  to  his  burghers  and  to 
consult  with  General  Botha.     He  was  much 

i86 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

more  a  man  of  the  world  and  more,  the  profes- 
sional politician  than  President  Kruger.  I  use 
the  words  "  professional  politician "  in  no  un- 
pleasant sense,  but  meaning  rather  that  he  was 
ready,  tactful,  and  diplomatic.  For  instance, 
he  gave  to  whatever  he  said  the  air  of  a  confi- 
dence reserved  especially  for  the  ear  of  the 
person  to  whom  he  spoke.  He  showed  none 
of  the  bitterness  which  President  Kruger  ex- 
hibits toward  the  British,  but  took  the  tone 
toward  the  English  Government  of  the  most 
critical  and  amused  tolerance.  Had  he  heard 
it,  it  would  have  been  intensely  annoying  to 
any  Englishman. 

'*  I  see  that  the  London  Chronicle,''  he  said, 
*'  asks  if,  since  I  have  become  a  rebel,  I  do 
not  lose  my  rights  as  a  Barrister  of  the  Tem- 
ple ?  Of  course,  we  are  no  more  rebels  than 
the  Spaniards  were  rebels  against  the  United 
States.  By  a  great  stretch  of  the  truth,  under 
the  suzerainty  clause,  the  burghers  of  the 
Transvaal  might  be  called  rebels,  but  a  Free 
Stater — never  !  It  is  not  the  animosity  of  the 
English  which  I  mind,"  he  added,  thought- 
fully, **  but  their  depressing  ignorance  of  their 

own  history." 

187 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

**  I  can  do  nothing  with  Lord  Roberts,"  he 
said  again,  as  though  the  English  commander 
was  a  disobedient  child.  *'  I  wrote  him  calling 
his  attention  to  the  fact  that  his  troops  were 
burning  the  houses  in  the  Free  State,  and  that 
such  an  act  was  contrary  to  the  usages  of  civil- 
ized war.  He  replied  that  my  charges  were 
not  sufficiently  specific,  so  I  wrote  again  spec- 
ifying eighteen  houses  that  had  been  burned, 
and  supplementing  my  charges  with  affidavits. 
His  reply  was  that  he  was  too  busy  to  attend 
to  such  details."  The  President  shrugged  his 
shoulders  and  laughed  as  much  as  to  say, 
**What  can  one  do  with  such  a  man?"  His 
cheerfulness  and  hopefulness,  even  though  one 
guessed  they  were  assumed,  commanded  one's 
admiration.  He  was  being  hunted  out  of  one 
village  after  another,  the  miles  of  territory  still 
free  to  him  were  hourly  shrinking — in  a  few 
days  he  would  be  a  refugee  in  the  Transvaal  ; 
but  he  stood  in  the  open  veldt  with  all  his 
possessions  in  the  cart  behind  him,  a  president 
without  a  republic,  a  man  without  a  home, 
but  still  full  of  pluck,  cheerful  and  unbeaten. 

The  farm-house  of  General  Andrew  Cronje 
stood  just  above  the  drift  and  was  the  only 

i88 


President  Steyn. 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

conspicuous  mark  for  the  English  guns  on  our 
side  of  the  river,  so  in  order  to  protect  it  the 
General  had  turned  it  over  to  the  ambulance 
corps  to  be  used  as  a  hospital.  They  had 
lashed  a  great  Red  Cross  flag  to  the  chimney 
and  filled  the  clean  shelves  of  the  generously 
built  kitchen  with  bottles  of  antiseptics  and 
bitter -smelling  drugs  and  surgeons'  cutlery. 
President  Steyn  gave  me  a  letter  to  Dr.  Rodg- 
ers  Reid,  who  was  in  charge,  and  he  offered 
us  our  choice  of  the  deserted  bedrooms.  It 
was  a  most  welcome  shelter,  and  in  compari- 
son to  the  cold  veldt  the  hospital  was  a  haven 
of  comfort.  Hundreds  of  cooing  doves,  stum- 
bling over  the  roof  of  the  barn,  helped  to  fill 
the  air  with  their  peaceful  murmur.  It  was  a 
strange  overture  to  a  battle,  but  in  time  I 
learned  to  not  listen  for  any  more  martial  pre- 
lude. The  Boer  does  not  make  a  business  of 
war,  and  when  he  is  not  actually  fighting  he 
pretends  that  he  is  camping  out  for  pleasure. 
In  his  laager  there  are  no  warlike  sounds,  no 
sentries  challenge,  no  bugle's  call.  He  has  no 
duties  to  perform,  for  his  Kaffir  boys  care  for 
his  pony,  gather  his  wood,  and  build  his  fire. 

He  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  wait  for  the  next 

189 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

fight,  and  to  make  the  time  pass  as  best  he 
can.  In  camp  the  burghers  are  like  a  party  of 
children.  They  play  games  with  each  other, 
and  play  tricks  upon  each  other,  and  engage  in 
numerous  wrestling  bouts,  a  form  of  contest  of 
which  they  seem  particularly  fond.  They  are 
like  children  also  in  that  they  are  direct  and 
simple,  and  as  courteous  as  the  ideal  child 
should  be.  Indeed,  if  I  were  asked  what 
struck  me  as  the  chief  characteristics  of  the 
Boer  I  should  say  they  were  the  two  quali- 
ties which  the  English  have  always  disal- 
lowed him,  his  simplicity  rather  than  his 
"cuteness,"  and  his  courtesy  rather  than  his 
boorishness. 

The  force  that  waited  at  the  drift  by  Cronje's 
farm  as  it  lay  spread  out  on  both  sides  of  the 
river  looked  like  a  gathering  of  Wisconsin 
lumbermen,  of  Adirondack  guides  and  hunters 
halted  at  Paul  Smith's,  like  a  Methodist  camp- 
meeting  limited  entirely  to  men. 

The  eye  sought  in  vain  for  rows  of  tents, 
for  the  horses  at  the  picket  line,  for  the  flags 
that  marked  the  head-quarters,  the  commis- 
sariat, the  field  telegraph,  the  field  post-office, 

the  A.  S.  C,  the  R.  M.  A.  C,  the  C.  O.,  and 

190 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND    RIVER 

all  the  other  combinations  of  letters  of  the 
military  alphabet. 

I  remembered  that  great  army  of  General 
Buller's  as  I  saw  it  stretching  out  over  the 
basin  of  the  Tugela,  like  the  children  of  Israel 
in  number,  like  Tammany  Hall  in  organiza- 
tion and  discipline,  with  not  a  tent-pin  miss- 
ing ;  with  hospitals  as  complete  as  those  estab- 
lished for  a  hundred  years  in  the  heart  of 
London  ;  with  search-lights,  heliographs,  war 
balloons.  Roentgen  rays,  pontoon  bridges,  tele- 
graph wagons,  and  trenching  tools,  farriers 
with  anvils,  major-generals,  map-makers,  ''gal- 
lopers," intelligence  departments,  even  bio- 
graphs  and  press-censors  ;  every  kind  of  thing 
and  every  kind  of  man  that  goes  to  make  up 
a  British  army  corps.  I  knew  that  seven 
miles  from  us  just  such  another  completely 
equipped  and  disciplined  column  was  advanc- 
ing to  the  opposite  bank  of  the  Sand  River. 

And  opposed  to  it  was  this  merry  company 
of  Boer  farmers  lying  on  the  grass,  toasting 
pieces  of  freshly  killed  ox  on  the  end  of  a 
stick,  their  hobbled  ponies  foraging  for  them- 
selves a  half-mile  away,  a  thousand  men  with- 
out a  tent  among  them,  without  a  field-glass. 

igi 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

It  was  a  picnic,  a  pastoral  scene,  not  a  scene 
of  war.  On  the  hills  overlooking  the  drift 
were  the  guns,  but  down  along  the  banks  the 
burghers  were  sitting  in  circles  singing  the 
evening  hymns,  many  of  them  sung  to  the 
tunes  familiar  in  the  service  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  so  that  it  sounded  like  a  Sunday  even- 
ing in  the  country  at  home.  At  the  drift 
other  burghers  were  watering  the  oxen,  bath- 
ing and  washing  in  the  cold  river ;  around  the 
camp-fires  others  were  smoking  luxuriously, 
with  their  saddles  for  pillows.  The  evening 
breeze  brought  the  sweet  smell  of  burning 
wood,  a  haze  of  smoke  from  many  fires,  the 
lazy  hum  of  hundreds  of  voices  rising  in  the 
open  air,  the  neighing  of  many  horses,  and  the 
swift  soothing  rush  of  the  river. 

These  were  the  men,  and  this  gypsy  encamp- 
ment was  the  force,  which,  for  six  months,  had 
been  holding  back  the  ''  Lion  and  her  cubs." 
It  was  holding  them  back  no  longer,  for  the 
soldiers  of  the  Queen  outnumbered  the  farm- 
ers ten  to  one,  and  under  ''  England's  Only 
General "  had  been  taught  the  value  of  flank 
movements. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  flank  an  enemy  when 

ig2 


O 
CQ 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

you  have  six  men  to  send  around  his  ends 
while  you  attack  him  in  the  centre  with  the 
remaining  four.  But  the  unfairness  of  the 
odds  was  not  what  impressed  one.  It  was  the 
character  of  the  opposing  forces  and  the  causes 
for  which  each  fought. 

On  the  one  bank  of  the  Sand  was  the  pro- 
fessional soldier,  who  does  whatever  he  is  or- 
dered to  do.  His  orders  this  time  were  to  kill 
a  sufficiently  large  number  of  human  beings  to 
cause  those  few  who  might  survive  to  throw 
up  their  hands  and  surrender  their  homes,  their 
country,  and  their  birthright.  On  the  other 
bank  were  a  thousand  self-governing,  self-re- 
specting farmers  fighting  for  the  land  they 
have  redeemed  from  the  lion  and  the  savage, 
for  the  towns  and  cities  they  have  reared  in  a 
beautiful  wilderness. 

**  An  Englishman's  house  is  his  castle,"  and 
he  can  defend  it  accordingly,  is  the  oldest  of 
English  adages.  The  Boer  has  merely  been 
defending  his  castle.  You  can  make  nothing 
more  of  this  war  than  that.  The  English- 
man will  tell  you  there  is  much  more  to  it 
than  that,  he  will  talk  glibly  of  a  franchise 
which  he  never  wanted,  of  unjust  mining  laws 

193 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

and  restrictions  which  are  much  more  gener- 
ous than  those  he  has  instituted  in  British  Co- 
lumbia, and  which  he  could  have  avoided  had 
he  not  found  he  was  growing  rich  in  spite  of 
them,  by  simply  remaining  in  his  own  country ; 
he  will  try  to  blind  you  by  pleading  that  the 
war  was  forced  upon  him  by  the  Boers'  ulti- 
matum, an  ultimatum  which  came  only  after 
he  had  threatened  the  borders  of  the  Trans- 
vaal with  20,000  soldiers. 

He  will  present  every  excuse,  every  sophis- 
try, every  reason  save  one,  which  is  that  he 
covets  the  Boer's  watch  and  chain,  and  is  going 
to  kill  him  to  get  it.  It  is  too  late  now  to  go 
into  the  injustice  of  this  war.  The  Boer  has 
lost  heart  and  is  falling  back,  leisurely,  as  is  his 
wont,  but  still  falling  back.  Before  this  is 
published  the  end  may  have  come  and  the 
English  will  be  pumping  the  water  out  of  the 
gold  mines  they  have  fought  so  long  and  so 
hard  to  win. 

It  is  possible  that  the  gold  may  repay  some 
few  of  them  for  their  losses,  but  it  will  not 
bring  twenty  thousand  men  back  to  life  again ; 
it  will  not  restore  the  lost  prestige  of  the  Brit- 
ish Army,  nor  pay  for  the  ill-feeling  of  Europe, 

194 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND  RIVER 

nor  for  the  loss  of  what  was  once  Great  Brit- 
ain's hope,  an  alliance  with  the  United  States. 

**  Never  envy  a  man  his  riches  until  you 
know  what  he  did  to  gain  them,"  is  a  saying  as 
old  as  Epictetus  ;  and  who  will  envy  England 
her  slaughtered,  bleeding  republics,  now  that 
we  see  the  price  they  have  cost  her ! 

Except  for  the  excellence  of  her  transport 
service,  it  has  cost  her  her  former  place  as  a 
military  power,  her  position  as  a  religious  na- 
tion. Even  her  Archbishop  of  Cape  Town  is 
to-day  with  thumbs  down  howling  in  the  name 
of  **  peace "  for  the  complete  and  utter  exter- 
mination of  the  two  prostrate  states.  It  has 
cost  her  the  right  to  speak  again  in  the  name 
of  Christianity,  for  the  chief  loot  of  her  soldiers 
is  the  Bibles  they  find  upon  the  dead  bodies  of 
the  men  they  have  killed.  It  has  given  her  a 
Dreyfus  scandal  of  her  own,  and  by  the  light 
of  the  homes  she  is  burning  in  the  Free  State 
she  can  read  her  acts  as  she  read  the  *'  Bulga- 
rian atrocities." 

This  may  seem  hysterical  and  unjust,  but  it 
is  time,  now  that  it  is  too  late,  that  we  should 
see  just  what  has  been  taking  place  while  the 
world  sat  idly  by.     We  have  been  misinformed 

195 


WITH   BOTH    ARMIES 

and  blinded  by  a  propaganda  against  the  Boer, 
a  manipulation  of  press  and  Parliament,  which 
has  never  been  equalled  in  dexterity  of  misrep- 
resentation nor  audacity  of  untruth,  not  even 
by  the  boulevard  journalists  who  live  on  black- 
mail and  the  Monte  Carlo  Sustenance  Fund. 

The  murder  and  robbery  of  a  Boer  on  the 
veldt  is  no  less  a  murder  and  robbery  than 
though  it  had  taken  place  in  Whitechapel  or 
on  Fifth  Avenue. 

The  Boer  has  been  murdered  and  robbed  ; 
and  the  fact  that  before  his  life  was  attempted 
his  character  was  attacked  and  vilified  is  not 
the  least  of  the  sins  for  which  the  '*  empire 
builders  "  of  Kimberley,  Johannesburg,  and  the 
Colonial  Office  must  some  day  stand  in  judg- 
ment. 

When   morning  came  to    Cronje's   farm   it 

brought  with  it  no  warning  nor  sign  of  battle. 

We  began  to  believe  that  the  British  Army  was 

an  invention  of  the  enemy's.     So  we  cooked 

bacon  and  fed  the  doves,  and  smoked  on  the 

veranda,  moving  our  chairs  around  it  with  the 

sun,  and  argued  as  to  whether  we  should  stay 

where  we  were  or  go  on  to  the   bridge.     At 

noon  it  was  evident  there  would  be  no  fight  at 

196 


'■J 

C 


m 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

the  drift  that  day,  so  we  started  along  the  bank 
of  the  river,  with  the  idea  of  reaching  the  bridge 
before  night-fall.  The  trail  lay  on  the  English 
side  of  the  river,  so  that  we  were  in  constant 
concern  lest  our  white-hooded  Cape  cart  would 
be  seen  by  some  of  their  scouts  and  we  would 
be  taken  prisoners  and  forced  to  travel  all  the 
way  back  to  Cape  Town.  We  saw  many  herds 
of  deer,  but  no  scouts  or  lancers  or  any  other 
living  thing,  and,  such  being  the  effect  of  many 
kopjes,  lost  all  ideas  as  to  where  we  were.  We 
knew  we  were  bearing  steadily  south  toward 
Lord  Roberts,  who,  as  we  later  learned,  was 
then  some  three  miles  distant. 

About  two  o'clock  his  guns  opened  on  our 
left,  so  we  at  least  knew  that  we  were  still  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  river  and  that  we  must 
be  between  the  Boer  and  the  English  artillery. 
Except  for  that,  our  knowledge  of  our  geograph- 
ical position  was  a  blank,  and  we  accordingly 
*'  outspanned  "  and  cooked  more  bacon.  ''  Out- 
spanning  "  is  unharnessing  the  ponies  and  mules 
and  turning  them  out  to  graze,  and  takes  three 
minutes — ''  inspanning  "  is  trying  to  catch  them 
again,  and  takes  from  three  to  five  hours. 

We  started  back  over  the  trail  over  which  we 

197 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

had  come,  and  just  at  sunset  saw  a  man  appear 
from  behind  a  rock  and  disappear  again. 
Whether  he  was  Boer  or  Briton  I  could  not 
tell,  but  while  I  was  examining  the  rock  with 
my  glasses  two  Boers  came  galloping  forward 
and  ordered  me  to  ''hands  up."  To  sit  with 
both  arms  in  the  air  is  an  extremely  ignominious 
position,  and  especially  annoying  if  the  pony  is 
restless,  so  I  compromised  by  waving  my  whip 
as  I  could  reach  with  one  hand,  and  still  held 
in  the  horse  with  the  other.  The  third  man 
from  behind  the  rock  rode  up  at  the  same  time. 
They  said  they  had  watched  us  coming  from 
the  English  lines,  and  that  we  were  prisoners. 
We  assured  them  that  for  us  nothing  could  be 
more  satisfactory,  because  we  now  knew  where 
we  were,  and  because  they  had  probably  saved 
us  a  week's  trip  to  Cape  Town.  They  exam- 
ined and  approved  of  our  credentials,  and 
showed  us  the  proper  trail  which  we  managed 
to  follow  until  they  had  disappeared,  when  the 
trail  disappeared  also,  and  we  were  again  lost 
in  what  seemed  an  interminable  valley.  But 
just  before  nightfall  the  fires  of  the  commando 
showed   in   front  of  us  and  we   rode  into  the 

camp  of  General  Christian  De  Wet.     He  told 

198 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

us  we  could  not  reach  the  bridge  that  night, 
and  showed  us  a  farm-house  on  a  distant  kopje 
where  we  could  find  a  place  to  spread  our 
blankets.  I  was  extremely  glad  to  meet  him, 
as  he  and  General  Botha  are  the  most  able  and 
brave  of  the  Boer  generals.  He  was  big, 
manly,  and  of  impressive  size,  and,  although 
he  speaks  EngHsh,  he  dictated  to  his  adjutant 
many  long  and  old-world  compliments  to  the 
Greater  Republic  across  the  seas.  It  was 
Christian  DeWet,  who  at  Sannahspost,  captured 
one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  wagons  and  their 
escort  without  firing  a  shot.  As  the  wagons 
entered  the  pass  where  his  men  were  concealed 
he  rose  from  behind  a  rock  and  beckoned,  say- 
ing **Come  in"  to  each  driver,  and  although  he 
was  the  only  Boer  in  sight  the  men  on  the 
wagons  obediently  turned  their  teams  in  behind 
the  kopje  from  w^hich  he  had  called  to  them. 
Later,  when  the  English  in  the  distant  camp 
saw  that  the  wagons  instead  of  stretching  out 
along  the  road  to  Bloemfontein  were  all  hud- 
dled together,  they  sent  two  hundred  of  the 
Irregular  Cavalry  to  learn  what  was  wrong. 
De  Wet  allowed  these  men  also  to  enter  the  pass 

and  then  rose  up  quite  alone,  so  that  he  was 

199 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

the  only  man  they  saw,  and  called  to  them  : 
"  Hands  up.  You  are  surrounded.  My  men 
are  behind  these  rocks.  You  are — tell  your 
officer  to  come  forward."  It  is  a  fine  picture 
that  this  Boer  makes  standing  up  alone  like 
Roderick  Dhu  and  bringing  two  hundred  troop- 
ers to  a  halt,  warning  them  at  the  same  time  to 
save  their  own  lives.  There  must  have  been 
something  uncanny  in  it,  too,  in  this  one  man 
of  giant  size  suddenly  appearing  on  a  barren 
hill-side,  and  in  the  consciousness  also  that  every 
rock  about  him  concealed  a  pointed  rifle. 
When  the  officer  in  command  of  the  cavalry 
rode  toward  him,  De  Wet  repeated  :  ''  You  are 
completely  surrounded,  sir.  My  burghers  are 
hidden  behind  these  rocks.  Go  back  to  your 
men  and  tell  them  to  throw  down  their  rifles 
and  hold  up  their  hands.  If  you  say  anything 
but  that  to  them,  you  will  be  shot  instantly." 
The  officer  saluted  and  turned,  and  as  he  rode 
back  De  Wet  covered  him  with  his  rifle.  The 
officer  waited  until  he  was  within  a  few  feet  of 
his  men,  and  then  shouted,  *'  Fall  back,"  and 
spurred  his  horse  to  escape.  At  the  word  De  Wet 
shot  him  between  the  shoulders,  and  the  hidden 
burghers  drove  eighty  men  out  of  the  saddle. 

200 


'J 


U 


< 


03 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

Since  that  time  General  De  Wet  and  General 
Botha  have  shown  by  their  daring,  and  by  al- 
ways taking  the  initiative,  how  unfortunate  it 
was  for  the  Transvaal  that  the  aged  Joubert 
and  the  stubborn  Cronje  were  in  command  of 
the  Boer  forces  throughout  the  most  critical 
portion  of  the  war. 

Even  after  Lord  Roberts  had  occupied  Pre- 
toria, the  raids  and  rapid  movements  of  DeWet 
and  Botha  and  their  destructive  attacks  upon 
his  line  of  communication  have  proved  them 
to  be  cavalry  leaders  of  such  eminent  ability 
and  spirit  as  was  possessed  in  a  greater  degree 
by  our  own  Southern  generals  Jackson  and 
Morgan. 

We  found  the  people  in  the  farm-house  on 
the  distant  kopje  quite  hysterical  over  the  near 
presence  of  the  British,  and  the  entire  place  in 
such  an  uproar  that  we  slept  out  in  the  veldt. 
In  the  morning  we  were  awakened  by  the 
sound  of  the  Vickar-Maxim  or  the  "  pom- 
pom "  as  the  English  call  it,  or  ''  bomb- 
Maxim  "  as  the  Boers  call  it.  By  any  name 
it  was  a  remarkable  gun  and  the  most  de- 
moralizing of  any  of  the  smaller  pieces  which 
have  been  used  in  this  campaign.     One  of  its 

201 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

values  is  that  its  projectiles  throw  up  sufficient 
dust  to  enable  the  gunner  to  tell  exactly  where 
they  strike,  and  within  a  few  seconds  he  is  able 
to  alter  the  range  accordingly.  In  this  way  it 
is  its  own  range-finder.  Its  bark  is  almost  as 
dangerous  as  its  bite,  for  its  reports  have  a 
brisk,  insolent  sound  like  a  postman's  knock, 
or  a  cooper  hammering  rapidly  on  an  empty 
keg,  and  there  is  an  unexplainable  mocking 
sound  to  the  reports,  as  though  the  gun  were 
laughing  at  you.  The  English  Tommies  used 
to  call  it  very  aptly  the  **  hyena  gun."  I  found 
it  just  as  offensive  from  the  rear  as  when  I  was 
with  the  British  and  in  front  of  it. 

From  the  top  of  a  kopje  we  saw  that  the 
battle  had  at  last  begun  and  that  the  bridge 
was  the  objective  point.  The  EngHsh  came  up 
in  great  lines  and  blocks  and  from  so  far  away 
and  in  such  close  order  that  at  first  in  spite  of 
the  khaki  they  looked  as  though  they  wore 
uniforms  of  blue.  They  advanced  steadily,  and 
two  hours  later  when  we  had  ridden  to  a  kopje 
still  nearer  the  bridge  they  were  apparently  in 
the  same  formation  as  when  we  had  first  seen 
them,  only  now  farms  that  had  lain  far  in  their 
rear  were  over-run  by  them  and  they  encom- 

202 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND    RIVER 

passed  the  whole  basin.  An  army  of  twenty- 
five  thousand  men  advancing  in  full  view  across 
a  great  plain  appeals  to  you  as  something  en- 
tirely lacking  in  the  human  element.  You  do 
not  think  of  it  as  a  collection  of  very  tired, 
dusty,  and  perspiring  men  with  aching  legs  and 
parched  lips,  but  as  an  unnatural  phenomenon, 
or  a  gigantic  monster  which  wipes  out  a  railway 
station,  a  corn-field,  and  a  village  with  a  single 
clutch  of  one  of  its  tentacles.  You  would  as 
soon  attribute  human  qualities  to  a  plague,  a 
tidal  wave,  or  a  slowly  slipping  landslide.  One 
of  the  tentacles  composed  of  six  thousand  horse 
had  detached  itself  and  crossed  the  river  below 
the  bridge,  where  it  was  creeping  up  on  Botha's 
right.  We  could  see  the  burghers  galloping 
before  it  toward  Ventersburg.  At  the  bridge 
General  Botha  and  President  Steyn  stood  in 
the  open  road  and  with  uplifted  arms  waved 
the  Boers  back,  calling  upon  them  to  stand. 
But  the  burghers  only  shook  their  heads  and 
with  averted  eyes  grimly  and  silently  rode  by 
them  on  the  other  side.  They  knew  they  were 
flanked,  they  knew  the  men  in  the  moving 
mass  in   front  of  them  were  in  the  proportion 

of  nine  to  one. 

203 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

When  you  looked  down  upon  the  lines  of 
the  English  Army  advancing  for  three  miles 
across  the  plain,  one  could  hardly  blame  them. 
The  burghers  did  not  even  raise  their  Mausers. 
One  bullet,  the  size  of  a  broken  slate-pencil, 
falling  into  a  block  three  miles  across  and  a 
mile  deep,  seems  so  inadequate.  It  was  like 
trying  to  turn  back  the  waves  of  the  sea  with  a 
blowpipe. 

It  is  true  they  had  held  back  as  many  at  Co- 
lenso,  but  the  defensive  positions  there  were 
magnificent,  and  since  then  six  months  had 
passed,  during  which  time  the  same  thirty  thou- 
sand men  who  had  been  fighting  then  were 
fighting  still,  while  the  enemy  was  always  new, 
with  fresh  recruits  and  reinforcements  arriving 
daily. 

As  the  English  officers  at  Durban,  who  had 
so  lately  arrived  from  home  that  they  wore 
swords,  used  to  say  with  the  proud  conscious- 
ness of  two  hundred  thousand  men  back  of 
them  :  "  It  won't  last  much  longer  now.  The 
Boers  have  had  their  belly  full  of  fighting. 
They're  fed  up  on  it ;  that's  what  it  is  ;  they're 
fed  up." 

They  forgot  that  the  Boers,  who  for  three 

204 


General  Botha. 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

months  had  held  BuUer  back  at  the  Tugela, 
were  the  same  Boers  who  were  rushed  across 
the  Free  State  to  rescue  Cronje  from  Rob- 
erts, and  who  were  then  sent  to  meet  the  re- 
lief column  at  Fourteen  Streams,  and  were 
then  ordered  back  again  to  harass  Roberts 
at  Sannahspost,  and  who,  at  last,  worn  out, 
stale,  heartsick,  and  hopeless  at  the  unequal 
odds  and  endless  fighting,  fell  back  at  Sand 
River. 

For  three  months  thirty  thousand  men  had 
been  attempting  the  impossible  task  of  en- 
deavoring to  meet  an  equal  number  of  the 
enemy  in  three  different  places  at  the  same 
time. 

I  have  seen  a  retreat  in  Greece  when  the 
men,  before  they  left  the  trenches,  stood  up  in 
them  and  raged  and  cursed  at  the  advancing 
Turk,  cursed  at  their  Government,  at  their 
King,  at  each  other,  and  retreated  with  shame 
in  their  faces  because  they  did  so. 

But  the  retreat  of  the  burghers  of  the  Free 

State  was  not  like  that.    They  rose  one  by  one 

and  saddled  their  ponies  with  the  look  in  their 

faces  of  men  who  had  been  attending  the  funeral 

of  a  friend,  and  who  were  leaving  just  before 

205 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

the  coffin  was  swallowed  in  the  grave.  Some 
of  them,  for  a  long  time  after  the  greater  num- 
ber of  the  commando  had  ridden  away,  sat  upon 
the  rocks  staring  down  into  the  sunny  valley 
below  them,  talking  together  gravely,  rising  to 
take  a  last  look  at  the  territory  which  was  their 
own.  The  shells  of  the  victorious  British 
sang  triumphantly  over  the  heads  of  their  own 
artillery,  bursting  impotently  in  white  smoke 
or  tearing  up  the  veldt  in  fountains  of  dust. 

But  they  did  not  heed  them.  They  did  not 
even  send  a  revengeful  bullet  into  the  approach- 
ing masses.  The  sweetness  of  revenge  could 
not  pay  for  what  they  had  lost.  They  looked 
down  upon  the  farm-houses  of  men  they 
knew ;  upon  their  own  farm-houses  rising  in 
smoke  ;  they  saw  the  Englishmen  like  a  pest 
of  locusts  settling  down  around  gardens  and 
farm-houses  still  nearer,  and  swallowing  them 
up. 

Their  companions,  already  far  on  the  way  to 
safety,  waved  to  them  from  the  veldt  to  follow  ; 
an  excited  doctor  carrying  a  wounded  man 
warned  them  that  the  English  were  just  below 
them,  storming  the  hill.  ''Our  artillery  is  aim- 
ing at  five  hundred  yards,"  he  shouted,  but  still 

206 


THE   BATTLE   OF   SAND   RIVER 

they  stood  immovable,  leaning  on  their  rifles, 
silent,  homeless,  looking  down  without  rage  or 
show  of  feeling  at  the  great  waves  of  khaki 
sweeping  steadily  toward  them,  and  possessing 
their  land. 


207 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    PRETORIA 

WHEN  we  had  retreated  for  a  mile  and  a 
half  on  the  road  to  Ventersburg,  the 
artillery  also  ceased  firing  and  followed  on  the 
same  road,  and  there  was  no  longer  any  sound 
except  the  heavy  booming  of  the  English  guns, 
which  grew  louder  and  louder  as  they  were 
pushed  forward  in  pursuit.  The  last  possible 
chance  left  to  the  Boers  to  make  a  stand  in  the 
Free  State  had  passed  away.  At  Ventersburg 
we  found  Jones's  Hotel  empty  and  deserted,  the 
Brooklyn  landlady  flown,  and  the  rooms  open 
and  free  to  all  comers.  A  black  and  white 
kitten  had  commandeered  my  room  and  was 
luxuriously  stretching  itself  in  the  centre  of 
the  bed.  In  the  stable-yard  the  Indian  coolie 
who  had  been  left  in  sole  possession  was  sit- 
ting on  an  overturned  bucket  and  weeping 
feebly.     He  was  eighty  years  old  and  had  been 

abandoned  to    his  fate,    which    had    been    de- 

208 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

scribed  to  him  by  a  facetious  bar-keeper  as 
hanging  or  St.  Helena.  Outside  in  Venters- 
burg's  only  street  the  shopkeepers  and  their 
families  were  throwing  clothes  and  food  into 
trek  wagons,  and  Cape  carts,  and  their  terrified 
Kaffir  boys  knelt  in  the  dust  unravelling  tan- 
gled heaps  of  harness  ;  others  of  their  towns- 
people were  already  disappearing  in  a  column 
of  dust  on  the  road  to  Kroonstad. 

On  the  edge  of  the  town  a  few  men  and 
women  were  watching  the  British  shells  reach- 
ing nearer  and  nearer.  Their  accents  were 
those  of  the  cockney  colonial,  and  their  faces 
were  shining  with  triumphant,  self-satisfied 
smiles.  The  men  had  put  on  their  cricket 
blasers,  the  women  their  Jubilee  brooches  and 
had  wound  the  ribbons  of  the  Castle  Line 
steamers  around  their  straw  hats.  They  had 
thrown  off  the  mask  and  had  at  last  declared 
themselves.  They  were  waiting  to  welcome 
the  conquerors. 

Since  five  that  morning  we  had  eaten  noth- 
ing, so  we  welcomed  the  lunch  the  Indian 
coolie  gathered  from  the  hotel  and  spread  for 
us  in  the  garden,  and  we  lingered  over  it  until 

a  despatch-rider  shouted  to  us  over  the  garden 

209 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

wall  that  the  English  shells  were  falling  in  the 
town  and  the  English  themselves  were  coming 
over  the  last  hill. 

The  retreat  upon  Kroonstad  lasted  five  hours 
and  it  was  a  remarkable  and  painful  sight.  In 
it  there  were  young  boys  and  old  men,  some  of 
the  men  so  old  and  feeble  that  when  they  left 
their  ponies  they  were  not  able  to  walk  with- 
out assistance.  These  were  not  the  wounded, 
but  the  men  who  solely  on  account  of  their  age 
had  succumbed  to  the  severities  of  the  cam- 
paign. All  of  them,  young  and  old,  bore  the 
reverse  with  the  same  impassiveness  which  we 
had  grown  to  recognize  as  characteristic.  They 
were  never  jubilant  over  their  successes,  at- 
tributing them  rather  to  the  kindness  of  the 
Lord,  nor  cast  down  and  embittered  by  defeat. 
As  we  rode  away  from  the  battle  I  heard  no 
one  blamed  for  not  having  conducted  it  differ- 
ently, and  no  one  boasted  of  any  particular 
act  of  his  commando  or  of  his  own  personal 
prowess.  The  retreating  burghers  stretched 
over  the  veldt  for  many  miles,  the  trek  wagons 
keeping  to  the  trail  and  the  mounted  men 
riding  alone  or  scattered  in  groups  of  from  a 
half-dozen  to  fifty  over  every  part  of  the  level 

2IO 


0 


'3o 


THE   LAST    DAYS   OF    PRETORIA 

prairie.  It  was  so  casual  and  so  unorganized 
but  not  disorganized  a  movement,  that  it  was 
impossible  to  believe  it  was  an  army  in  retreat. 
The  wagons  v/ith  each  from  twelve  to  twenty- 
oxen  straggled  along  the  trail  in  blocks  of  half 
a  mile  in  length,  and  from  behind  kopjes  and 
cornfields  and  out  of  dongas  and  hollows  in 
the  plain  the  cavalcades  kept  appearing  and 
disappearing,  so  that  as  far  as  one  could  see  on 
every  hand  were  countless  hundreds  of  mount- 
ed men  all  coming  from  a  different  point  and 
all  converging  upon  the  trail  to  the  capital. 
Toward  sundown  many  of  these  began  to  out- 
span  for  the  night,  so  that  long  after  all  sight 
of  the  trail  was  lost  the  light  of  their  camp- 
fires  and  the  smell  of  the  burning  wood  and 
coffee  and  toasted  meat  and  the  odors  of 
massed  oxen  and  horses  guided  us  to  the  right 
road  to  Kroonstad.  The  English  entered 
Kroonstad  the  next  day,  the  Boers  having 
again  retreated.  There  was  one  man,  how- 
ever, who  remained  and  whose  adventure  de- 
serves remembering.  His  name  is  Charlie 
Manyear,  and  he  belonged  to  Blake's  Irish 
Brigade.  When  the  English  cavalry  entered 
the  town  he  had  lingered  so  long  sampling  the 

211 


WITH    BOTH    ARMIES 

bottles  at  the  Grand  Hotel,  which  had  been 
abandoned,  that  he  did  not  hear  the  soldiers 
approaching  until  they  had  halted  in  the  street 
before  the  door.  He  saw  he  was  caught  if  he 
did  not  act  promptly,  and  with  charming  re- 
source threw  his  bandolier,  rifle,  and  coat 
under  the  bar,  rolled  up  his  sleeves,  and  began 
calmly  serving  drinks.  When  the  troopers  en- 
tered he  hailed  them  with  a  glad  shout  of  wel- 
come and  declared  that  they  must  drink  wnth 
him  and  at  the  expense  of  the  *' house."  He 
would  take  no  denial.  They  made  no  violent 
objection  to  this  offer,  and  he  continued  to 
play  barkeeper  until  he  declared  he  needed 
another  box  of  whiskey  from  the  store-room, 
and  slipping  out  at  the  back  mounted  one  of 
the  troop  horses  and  galloped  after  his  friends. 
The  retreat  continued  for  two  weeks,  the 
Boers  falling  back  from  one  position  to  an- 
other, abandoning  each  without  a  fight.  They 
surrendered — without  any  possible  excuse  for 
so  doing — naturally  fortified  places  like  those  at 
the  Sand  River  and  in  the  hills  beyond  the 
Vaal  at  the  Klip  River  Station,  and  then,  a  few 
days  later,  they  would  gather  together  and 
come   back   again,   when    it  was  too  late.      It 

212 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

was  difficult  at  the  time  to  understand  why 
they  acted  as  they  did,  and  the  series  of  retreats 
from  Brandfort  to  Johannesburg  are  still  to 
me  quite  incomprehensible.  I  was  with  the 
burghers  during  the  greater  part  of  this  time, 
and  certainly  no  one  could  have  asked  for  a 
better  position  than  the  one  they  prepared  to 
defend  at  Klip  River  and  which,  after  they  had 
further  strengthened  it  with  long  lines  of 
trenches,  they  abandoned  without  firing  a  shot. 
They  did  not  seem  to  be  frightened,  nor  de- 
moralized. They  were  as  calm  and  deliberate 
as  though  there  were  no  English  within  live 
hundred  miles,  but  they  would  not  stand. 
Some  said  it  was  because,  after  the  flanking  of 
Cronje,  the  burghers  were  in  constant  expec- 
tation of  being  surrounded.  Before  the  sur- 
render of  Cronje,  during  the  days  of  '*  frontal 
attacks,"  they  had  had  to  consider  only  the  force 
which  they  saw  directly  before  them,  but  with 
Roberts  they  were  never  sure  that  other,  un- 
seen columns  might  not  be  coming  around  too 
to  cut  them  off  in  the  rear,  and,  as  they  dreaded 
being  sent  to  St.  Helena  almost  as  keenly  as 
death    itself,  it  was   impossible  to  hold  them. 

Incidentally  these  retreats   show  the   tremen- 

213 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

dous  value  of  discipline  and  that  no  amount  of 
enthusiasm  nor  self-interest  can  succeed  with- 
out it ;  that  even  an  army  composed  of  patriots 
— where  each  man  is  fighting  without  pay  for 
his  own  farm  and  home  and  wife  and  children — 


may,  if  there  is  no  discipline  or  acknowledged 
authority  to  make  the  men  act  in  common,  go 
completely  to  pieces  at  a  critical  moment. 

Those  Americans  who  see  danger  in  a  "stand- 
ing army  "  of  60,000  men  in  a  country  of  70,- 
000,000  and  who  would  have  us  depend  upon 
our  citizen  soldiery,  should  consider  this  ques- 
tion. I  have  seen  undisciplined  citizens  of 
Greece  throw  the  regiments  of  regulars  into 
confusion  by  stampeding  through  their  ranks 
to  the  rear,  and  the  citizen  soldiery  of  my  own 
country  as  represented  by  the  Seventy-first 
New  York  Volunteers  funking  the  fight  and 
refusing  to  join  the  regulars  in  the  charge  up 
San  Juan  Hill,  and  I  have  seen  the  citizen 
soldiery  of  the  Boer  republic  refuse  battles 
which  might  have  turned  into  second  Colensos, 
through  their  not  having  acquired  the  habit  of 
obeying  orders.  At  the  Battle  of  Colenso  the 
burghers  wanted  to  fight,  at  the  Sand  and  Vaal 

rivers   they  did    not.      Discipline    would   have 

214 


THE   LAST    DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

allowed  them  no  choice  in  the  matter :  they 
would  have  followed  the  orders  of  their  offi- 
cers, who  were  in  this  case  Botha,  De  Wet,  and 
President  Steyn,  all  men  of  remarkable  judg- 
ment, knowledge,  and  courage.  What  made 
the  Boer  retreat  so  exasperating  was  the  fact 
that  again  and  again  they  gathered  in  force  and 
recaptured  with  a  fight  towns  and  positions 
which  a  week  previous  were  in  their  own  hands 
and  which  they  had  abandoned. 


When  the  English  shopkeepers  began  to 
give  us  our  change  in  the  paper  currency  of 
the  Transvaal,  we  knew  Lord  Roberts  was 
not  far  from  Pretoria.  When  we  preferred 
gold  they  said  that  the  notes,  which  were  torn 
in  two  and  pinned  together,  were  the  only 
kind  of  money  they  possessed,  and  then  grinned 
at  us  inquiringly,  as  though  they  asked  : 
"  What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it  ?" 

The  signs  of  the  times  were  further  adver- 
tised in  the  altered  appearance  of  the  shop- 
windows  of  the  Dutch  and  English  firms. 
Where  for  weeks  there  had  been  photographs 
of   Boer  laagers  and  caricatures  from   Dutch 

215 


WITH    BOTH   ARMIES 

comic  papers  of  English  generals  there  were 
now  chromo  portraits  of  the  Queen  and  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  photographs  of  English  ac- 
tresses, English  stationery,  English  sheet-music, 
and  English  books. 

At  the  Pretoria  Club  English  burghers  who 
had  cut  the  strings  of  champagne  bottles  to 
celebrate  Colenso,  Modder  River,  and  Sannahs- 
post,  became  prophets  of  disaster,  foretelling 
that  the  end  of  the  republic  was  at  hand,  and 
urged  others,  while  there  was  yet  time,  to 
swear  allegiance  to  the  people  who  would  rob 
them  of  their  land.  English  burghers  who 
never  had  entered  the  club  before  except  in 
riding  breeches  and  spurs,  and  after  leaving  a 
blanket,  bandoleer,  and  rifle  conspicuously  in 
the  hallway,  now  appeared  in  the  sedate  and 
sable  garments  of  the  advocate.  When  you 
spoke  to  one  of  these  of  the  defence  of  the 
capital  he  looked  over  your  head.  His  mind 
was  deep  in  his  law  library  :  it  had  never,  in 
fact,  concerned  itself  with  any  matter  more 
martial  or  more  militant. 

Those  Englishmen  of  poor  and  little  souls 
who  had  not  dared  to  raise  their  voices  during 

the  days  of  the  Boer  triumphs  now  found  them 

216 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

again,  now  that  an  army  of  35,000  Tommies 
was  only  a  few  miles  distant.  They  began  to 
swell  and  to  swagger,  taking  the  biggest  chair 
in  the  smoking-room,  the  head  of  the  table  at 
luncheon,  whispering  and  laughing  together  in 
corners.  Each  of  these  had  made  his  fortune 
in  the  Transvaal ;  each  of  them  held  some  post 
in  her  judiciary  or  owned  a  law-office  in  Vul- 
ture's Row.  Boer  money  was  paying  for  his 
children's  education  at  the  Model  school,  for 
the  Scotch  and  soda  at  his  elbow  ;  Boer  money 
enabled  his  wife  to  return  every  season  to  Lon- 
don to  the  place  she  always  spoke  of  as  home. 

They  were  full  burghers  of  the  Transvaal, 
and  as  burghers  it  was  their  first  duty  to  de- 
fend the  republic.  But  the  "foul  and  un- 
kempt "  Boer  had,  with  long-suffering  generos- 
ity and  good  feeling,  absolved  them  from  this 
duty  to  the  country  in  which  they  had  elected 
to  live. 

"  I  understand  your  position,"  the  field  cor- 
net of  Pretoria  would  say  to  them  when  he 
called  them  to  his  office,  '*  and  you  must  un- 
derstand ours.  You  promised  if  we  gave  you 
full  burgher  rights  that  you    would   fight  for 

the  republic,  and  before  you  gave  that  promise 

217 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

you  should  have  considered  that  some  day  you 
might  be  called  on  to  fight  against  your 
mother-country.  However,  it  will  be  ar- 
ranged. Do  not  make  any  questions  now,  but 
take  your  bandoleer  and  rifle  and  go  with  the 
other  burghers  to  the  front.  When  you  have 
shown  your  willingness  to  obey  the  constitu- 
tion you  will  be  recalled  by  telegraph." 

And  when  the  English  burgher  reached  the 
front  it  was  invariably  the  case  that  he  found 
a  telegram  awaiting  him  in  which  he  was  in- 
structed to  return  to  Pretoria.  On  arriving 
there  nothing  more  was  asked  of  him  than  that 
he  should  assist  in  preserving  good  order  at 
the  capital  by  arresting  Kaffir  servants  who 
were  on  the  streets  without  a  pass. 

This  consideration  for  the  English-born 
burgher,  which  was  always  shown  those  who 
protested  against  being  sent  to  fight  their 
own  countrymen,  is  an  interesting  commentary 
on  the  tales  told  us  by  the  entire  press  of  Great 
Britain,  of  how  colonials  and  burghers,  because 
they  refused  to  join  their  commando,  were 
kicked  to  death  by  the  Boers.  There  were  as 
many  Englishmen  kicked  to  death  by  the 
Boers,  for  that  or  any  other  reason,  as  there 

2l8 


t/1 


O 
O 

O 


> 


1J 

O 


THE    LAST    DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

were  Catholic  nuns  blown  from  the  mouths  of 
cannon  by  Lord  Roberts. 

But  these  renegade  Englishmen  quickly  for- 
got the  consideration  shown  them,  and  were 
the  first  to  declare  that  Pretoria  could  not  be 
defended  ;  the  first  to  offer  to  go  forth  to  meet 
Lord  Roberts  and  surrender  the  city  ;  the  first 
to  desert  the  people  who  had  sheltered  them 
when  they  came  to  them  from  the  London  law- 
courts,  briefless,  penniless,  and  hungry. 

They  ran  crouching  and  grovelling  to  meet 
the  new  face  at  the  door,  the  new  step  on  the 
floor ;  they  shouted  aloud  as  they  ran  that 
they  were  not  as  other  burghers  were,  and,  to 
prove  this,  called  for  the  death  sentence  of  the 
republic  which  had  befriended  them.  These 
were  the  creatures — neither  fish  nor  fowl,  cer- 
tainly not  men  —  who  first  repudiated  their 
own  country,  then  repudiated  their  adopted 
country,  and  ''  with  a  kiss  betrayed  her  to  her 
master." 

During  the  week  before  the  occupation  of 
Pretoria  it  was  impossible  to  learn  definitely 
even  then  from  the  Government  whether  or 
not  it  intended  to  defend  the  capital.     No  one 

seemed  to  think  it  probable  that  it  would  do 

219 


WITH   BOTH    ARMIES 

so,  but  there  were  many  of  the  Boer  generals 
who  were  quoted  as  saying  that  it  must  be  held. 
On  the  other  hand,  foreign  military  experts 
pronounced  emphatically  against  it.  They  de- 
clared that  to  protect  its  enormous  perimeter 
25,000  men  would  be  required.  That  was 
nearly  the  whole  fighting  force  of  the  Trans- 
vaal when  that  force  was  near  its  greatest 
strength.  There  were  no  means  of  feeding 
such  a  force,  and  there  was  not  in  that  short 
time  any  chance  of  collecting  together  the 
scattered  and  fleeing  commandoes  and  bring- 
ing them  back  to  Pretoria. 

Another  and  a  sentimental  reason  mediated 
largely  against  a  siege.  This  was  the  regard 
in  which  Pretoria  was  held  by  the  burghers 
for  itself  as  their  chosen  city,  as  their  capital. 
They  could  not  bring  themselves  to  think  of 
it  in  ruins — of  its  Folksraad  and  Palace  of  Jus- 
tice shattered,  its  churches,  homes,  and  flower- 
gardens  destroyed.  They  preferred  rather  that 
it  should  remain  as  they  had  known  it,  even 
though  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy. 

Up  to  the  time  that  I  left  Pretoria,  which 

was  two  days  before  Lord  Roberts  entered  the 

capital,  there  was  little  excitement  and  no  dis- 

220 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    PRETORIA 

order.  The  inhabitants  were  really  more  con- 
cerned over  the  English  soldiers  who  were 
imprisoned  at  Waterval  than  over  those  who 
were  fighting  their  way  toward  us  from  Johan- 
nesburg. And  they  had  some  cause  to  be. 
Had  4,000  Tommies  who  had  been  caged  for 
many  months  on  a  dirt  compound  suddenly 
broken  loose  and  taken  possession  of  Pretoria, 
with  no  officers  to  restrain  them,  one  can  only 
guess  what  might  have  happened. 

The  English  prisoners,  owing  to  the  need  of 
able-bodied  burghers  at  the  front,  were  guarded 
by  old  men  and  boys,  and  by  only  three  hun- 
dred of  these.  The  Tommies  had  grown  en- 
tirely out  of  hand,  and  now,  with  the  knowl- 
edge that  help  was  near,  were  in  a  state  of 
reckless  unruliness  which  might  lead  to  any 
outrage.  At  any  moment  a  combined  rush 
would  have  given  freedom  to  nine-tenths  of 
them,  but  the  want  of  organization,  or  the  lack 
of  a  leader,  or  the  fear  of  each  that  he  might 
be  the  tenth  man,  prevented  their  mobbing  the 
few  guards  and  making  their  escape.  Once 
out  they  could  have  taken  Pretoria  empty- 
handed,  for  there  were  no  burghers  to  defend 

it.     Whatever   I    may  think   of  their  officers, 

221 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

no  one  admires  the  courage,  good  humor, 
and  discipline  of  the  English  privates  and 
their  non-commissioned  officers  more  than 
myself. 

But,  knowing  what  I  did  of  how  they  were 
acting  at  Waterval,  and  the  temper,  or  loss  of 
it,  of  the  men  there,  I  confess  I  considered 
their  near  presence  to  Pretoria  a  much  more 
serious  menace  to  the  town  than  the  advancing 
army  of  35,000  disciplined  men. 

When  Roberts  reached  Johannesburg,  and 
his  arrival  at  Pretoria  within  the  next  few  days 
was  obviously  inevitable,  our  consul,  Adelbert 
S.  Hay,  asked  the  Government  that  he  might 
be  allowed  to  take  twenty  of  the  British  offi- 
cers from  their  camp  to  the  Tommies'  camp  at 
Waterval.  Ele  argued  that  if  they  reassumed 
command  over  their  own  men  they  could  soon 
get  them  in  hand,  and  that  no  outbreak  would 
follow. 

It  was  a  most  timely  and  excellent  idea.     It 

saved  the  English  from  the  mortification  which 

they  might  possibly  have  felt  had  the  prisoners 

run   amuck   before   Roberts  arrived,  and   also 

allowed  the  shopkeepers  and   householders  of 

Pretoria  to  sleep  in  peace,  without  fear  of  wak- 

222 


> 


a> 


(/3 


CO 

u 

r-> 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF    PRETORIA 

ing  in   the  morning  to   find  the  town  in  the 
hands,  not  of  the  enemy,  but  of  a  mob. 

Indeed,  at  that  time  about  the  only  busy  men 
in  Pretoria  outside  of  the  Boer  cabinet  was  our 
consul,  Adelbert  S.  Hay,  and  his  vice-consul, 
Gardner  F.  Coolidge  of  Boston.  They  were 
acting  for  English  subjects  as  well  as  for  Ameri- 
can citizens,  and  for  over  five  thousand  English 
prisoners,  both  civil  and  the  military,  and  the 
calls  upon  them  for  assistance  w^ere  many  and 
constant,  and  involved  the  protection  of  life  and 
of  property  of  enormous  value.  Mr.  Hay  is  a 
young  man,  and  when  the  President  selected 
him  to  fill  the  post  abandoned  by  Mr.  Macrum 
there  were  many  at  home  who  thought  him  too 
young  to  properly  carry  out  duties  which  were 
not  only  consular  but  diplomatic.  But  from 
what  I  learned  of  his  efforts  from  Americans, 
Boers,  and  British,  and  from  what  I  saw  daily 
of  the  work  accomplished  by  him  and  Mr. 
Coolidge  during  the  two  months  in  which  I 
was  in  Pretoria  I  can  think  of  no  one  who 
would  have  filled  the  office  more  successfully 
or  shown  greater  tact,  kindness,  and  diplomacy, 
nor  worked  as  unremittingly.    Many  Americans, 

whose   business   had   been   interrupted   by  the 

223 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

war,  wives  who  were  separated  from  their  hus- 
bands at  the  front,  and  owners  of  property  who 
were  forced  to  leave  it  in  the  care  of  the  Amer- 
ican consul  found,  in  their  need,  Mr.  Hay  and 
Mr.  Coolidge  to  be  the  best  of  friends,  and  the 
aid  they  gave  to  their  fellow-countrymen  came 
from  the  heart,  and  largely  from  their  own 
pockets.  The  English  people  owe  Mr.  Hay  a 
debt  of  gratitude  for  the  care  he  took  of  the 
health  and  welfare  of  their  imprisoned  soldiers 
which  they  can  hardly  hope  to  repay,  and  the 
American  Government  has  great  reason  to  feel 
gratified  at  the  manner  in  which  he  reflected 
credit  upon  the  administration  and  upon  him- 
self. 

I  returned  to  Pretoria  a  week  before  it  fell, 
and  found  the  capital  completely  indifferent  to 
its  fate.  I  heard  of  one  man  who  in  prepara- 
tion for  the  siege  had  laid  in  a  store  of  forage, 
and  of  another  who  bought  tinned  meats  in 
sufficient  quantities  to  feed  his  family  for  three 
months,  but  no  one  else  I  knew  seemed  to  take 
the  approach  of  the  British  seriously.  This 
was  not  because  they  did  not  care,  but  because 
the    Boer  does   not  wear  his  heart  upon   his 

sleeve,  and  treats  all  fortunes  with  stoical  calm. 

224 


K.  H.  Da 


Adelbert  S.  Hay, 
U.  S.  Consul. 


I.  G.  Coolidi,re, 
\'ice-Cousul. 


The  United  States  Consul  to  Pretoria, 


THE   LAST  DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

There  was  still  enough  to  eat  in  the  town,  al- 
though prices  rose  daily.  Sugar,  however,  was 
exhausted,  and  sewing  thread.  These  two 
commodities,  however,  were  the  only  things 
that  money  could  not  obtain.  Up  to  the  very 
last  the  Boer  residents  gave  concerts  for  the 
benefit  of  the  sick  and  wounded,  at  which  one 
could  hear  the  best  classical  music  excellently 
played  and  sung.  The  Boer  children  continued 
to  go  to  school  and  to  shout  in  the  square  at 
recess,  the  wives  of  the  officials  to  call  and  re- 
turn calls,  and  each  afternoon  the  carriages  of 
the  wives  of  the  foreign  residents  stood  in  front 
of  the  stores  in  the  ''  shopping  "  district,  while 
their  husbands  met  as  usual  in  the  cool  seclu- 
sion of  the  Pretoria  Club.  Nine  months  had 
passed  since  the  optimistic  guard  at  Waterloo 
Station  had  closed  the  carriage-door  on  the  de- 
parting British  officers,  and  convulsed  England 
by  wittily  calling  *'A11  aboard  for  Pretoria." 
Since  then  many  of  the  officers  had  reached 
Pretoria  with  little  difficulty,  but  the  fact  that 
the  bulk  of  them  were  only  a  few  miles  distant 
from  the  city  toward  which  for  a  year  they 
had  been  fighting  their  way,  affected  the  inhab- 
itants of  London  much  more  deeply  than  the 

225 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

residents  of  Pretoria  itself.  One  has  so  few 
chances  of  benig  inside  the  capital  of  a 
nation  when  a  hostile  army  has  advanced  to 
within  a  day's  march  of  it,  that  the  conduct  of 
the  citizens  of  Pretoria  was  most  disappointing. 
One  wanted  them  to  hold  public  meetings,  to 
loot  the  shops,  or  in  some  way  to  show  emotion 
and  a  proper  regard  for  the  dramatic  possibili- 
ties of  the  situation.  But  the  Boers,  both  offi- 
cial and  unofficial,  maintained  the  best  of  good 
order,  and  the  affairs  of  life  went  smoothly  for- 
ward without  heat,  bustle,  or  excitement. 

Two  days  before  Johannesburg  was  taken 
the  Boers  began  a  great  trek  through  Pretoria 
on  their  way  to  the  Lydenburg  Mountains. 
From  early  in  the  morning  and  all  through  the 
night  one  could  hear  the  rumble  and  creak  of 
the  ox-carts  and  the  shrieks  and  shouts  of  the 
Kaffir  drivers,  and  all  day  long  one  met  in 
every  street  a  broken  stream  of  burghers  am- 
bling along  alone  or  in  groups,  and  all  moving 
toward  the  hills  where  the  last  stand  was  to  be 
made  and  the  guerilla  warfare  begun.  The 
President  and  his  cabinet  followed  them  at 
seven   o'clock  in   the   evening  on  the  first  of 

June,  and  the  gold  to  carry  on  the  business  of 

226 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

the  Government  at  the  new  capital  at  Macha- 
dodorp  was  shipped  after  them  the  same  even- 
ing. It  was  conveyed  in  public  cabs  from  the 
Palace  of  Justice,  where  it  had  been  stored,  and 
unloaded  into  a  freight-car.  There  were  no 
guards  to  protect  the  treasure,  and  the  Kaffir 
boys  who  drove  the  cabs  assisted  in  removing 
the  gold  and  carrying  it  to  the  car.  It  was  a 
remarkable  sight.  It  was  midnight,  and  the 
scene  was  lit  only  by  a  few  of  the  station  lamps. 
The  gold  was  in  bars  worth  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  each,  and  had  been  bundled  into 
the  cabs  and  tucked  under  the  seats  and  piled 
on  top  of  them  and  at  the  feet  of  the  drivers. 
Before  leaving  the  station  for  another  load  the 
negro  boys  would  lift  up  the  cushions  of  the 
seats  and  feel  about  behind  the  flaps  to  discover 
if  any  bars  had  been  overlooked.  One  boy 
drove  away  to  some  little  distance  before  he 
noticed  that  there  was  a  bar  still  resting  under 
his  foot.  He  came  back,  tossed  it  to  one  of 
the  station  hands  and  the  man  threw  it  into  the 
car.  The  next  day  the  burghers  began  to  com- 
mandeer all  the  horses  for  "  remounts,"  and 
those  drivers  who  were  so  unlucky  as  not  to 

own  mules,  abandoned  their  cabs  by  the  side- 

227 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

walks.  In  a  few  hours  the  streets  looked  as 
deserted  as  lower  Broadway  on  a  Sunday 
morning.  On  the  day  following  the  firing  of 
the  cannon  between  us  and  Johannesburg  was 
faintly  audible,  and  every  minute  we  were 
told  that  the  English  had  entered  the  city, 
and  were  marching  up  to  take  possession  of 
the  public  buildings. 

Near  the  railway  station  there  was  a  great 
zinc  building  in  which  were  stored  enormous 
quantities  of  rations  belonging  to  the  Govern- 
ment. These  formed  the  base  supply  for  the 
men  at  the  front,  but  the  Government,  sooner 
than  see  these  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Eng- 
lish, directed  the  Boer  officials  who  had  been 
detailed  to  remain  in  Pretoria  to  allow  the 
burghers  who  were  passing  through  the  town 
to  Lydenburg  to  break  open  the  building  and 
to  help  themselves.  They  did  so  and  every- 
one else  in  the  town  helped  himself  under  the 
pretence  of  helping  the  burghers.  For  hours, 
women  and  children,  Kaffirs,  burghers.  Out- 
landers,  shopkeepers,  and  ladies  and  gentlemen 
who  needed  the  food  no  more  than  they  did 
shoes  and  stockings,  surrounded  the  building, 

ripped  open  the  zinc  sides,  and  staggered  away 

228 


-J 


CQ 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

laden  with  all  the  coffee,  sugar,  flour,  and 
candles  they  could  carry.  I  saw  one  of  the 
Dutch  engineers  of  the  railroad  with  five  ten- 
pound  boxes  of  coffee  hung  about  him  by 
ropes,  so  that  he  looked  like  a  strong  man  giv- 
ing an  exhibition  at  the  Music  Hall.  Un- 
til late  in  the  afternoon  Kaffirs  and  white 
men  together  struggled  over  enormous  sacks 
of  flour  and  sugar  until  the  streets  were 
covered  with  the  contents  of  the  broken  bags, 
and  the  Kaffir  women  began  scooping  the 
sugar  up  out  of  the  gutters  and  filling  their 
aprons.  The  English  residents  pointed  out 
the  scene  to  me  as  one  of  unlicensed  looting, 
but  they  knew  perfectly  well  that  the  rations 
belonged  to  the  Government,  that  the  building 
had  been  thrown  open  to  the  burghers  and 
that  the  burghers  were  only  taking  their  own. 
The  Outlanders,  the  English  shopkeepers,  the 
Hebrews,  the  Kaffirs,  and  the  Dutch  looted, 
but  the  burghers  had  as  much  right  to  the 
stuff  as  to  the  family  Bible  on  the  centre-table. 
The  burghers,  however,  were  greatly  distressed 
at  the  scene  of  disorder  and  were  chagrined 
to   think    what   capital  would  be  made  of  it. 

They  were  especially  anxious  that  no  photo- 

229 


WITH    BOTH    ARMIES 

graphs  should  be  taken  of  the  scene,  as  they 
foresaw  that  the  English  would  misrepresent 
the  incident  and  report  it  as  another  disgrace- 
ful act  of  Boer  barbarism.  As  a  matter  of 
history,  although  guards  were  set  at  the  banks 
and  other  precautions  taken,  no  private  stores 
were  looted.  The  only  stores  that  w^ere  en- 
tered were  those  belonging  to  the  Jew  dealers 
around  the  railroad  station,  who  had  been 
among  the  first  to  loot  the  rations,  and  the 
burghers  followed  them  into  their  shops  and 
removed  the  food  which  they  had  carried  there. 
I  did  not  see  the  entry  of  Lord  Roberts. 
The  event  did  not  seem  sufficiently  important 
to  repay  for  the  sacrifice.  The  triumphal  entry 
of  the  German  Army  into  Paris,  I  should  like 
to  have  seen.  That  was  the  chmax  of  a  great 
war  between  two  powerful  and  equally  matched 
peoples,  and  Paris,  even  in  her  moment  of  hu- 
miliation, is  one  of  the  two  cities  of  the  world. 
The  event  itself  was  magnificent  and  historical. 
But  the  entrance  of  the  Guards  and  the  High- 
landers, the  C.  I.V's,  the  Imperial  Yeomanry, 
and  twenty  thousand  other  troops  with  Lord 
Roberts  at  their  head  into  the  undefended  vil- 
lage capital  of  a  tiny  republic  is  not  a  feat  of 

230 


THE   LAST    DAYS    OF    PRETORIA 

arms  that  I  personally  cared  to  witness,  nor  to 
describe.  All  I  could  have  said  of  them  was 
what  the  lady  vindictively  called  after  the  burg- 
lar who  had  just  swept  her  jewelry  from  her 
dressing-table,  ''  I  think  you  might  be  in  a 
better  business." 

One  feels  all  sorrow  and  all  respect  for  the 
Tommies  who  have  fallen  by  the  Boer  rifle,  for 
those  bov  officers  who  each  week  in  the  illus- 
trated  papers  smile  at  us  from  the  past,  those 
young  men  who  though  they  served  in  an  un- 
just Vv'ar  waged  without  tolerance  and  without 
intelligence  gave  up  their  lives  for  the  Empire 
and  with  cheerful  unselfishness  and  reckless 
courage  died  nobly  though  in  an  ignoble  cause. 
But  when  Lord  Roberts  and  his  army  fling  out 
the  black  flag  and  go  forth  under  it  on  a  Jame- 
son Raid,  when  they  murder  old  men  and 
young  boys  because  they  fight  for  their  homes, 
the  best  that  they  can  ask  of  everyone  is  si- 
lence as  to  their  misdeeds  and  that  their  tri- 
umph may  be  crowned  with  oblivion.  When 
they  enter  the  capital  of  some  great  power 
which  they  have  conquered,  when  they  march 
into    Berlin,   Paris,  or  Petersburg,   I  certainly 

hope  I   may  be  there  to  chronicle  such  a  real 

231 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

victory,  but  I  object  to  being  called  out  on  a 
false  alarm. 

I  left  Pretoria  with  every  reason  for  regret. 
I  had  come  to  it  a  stranger  and  had  found 
friends  among  men  whom  I  had  learned  to  like 
for  themselves  and  for  their  cause.  I  had  come 
prejudiced  against  them,  believing  them  to  be 
all  the  English  press  and  my  English  friends 
had  painted  them  ;  semi-barbarous,  uncouth, 
money-loving,  and  treacherous  in  warfare.  I 
found  them  simple  to  the  limit  of  their  own 
disadvantage,  magnanimous  to  their  enemies, 
independent  and  kindly.  I  had  heard  much  of 
the  corruption  of  their  officials,  and  I  saw  daily 
their  chief  minister  of  state  at  a  time  when 
every  foreign  resident  was  driving  through 
Pretoria  in  a  carriage,  passing  to  and  from  the 
government  buildings  in  a  tram-car,  their  Presi- 
dent living  in  a  white-washed  cottage,  their 
generals  serving  for  months  at  the  front  with- 
out pay  and  without  hope  of  medals  or  titles. 
Their  ignorance  of  the  usages  and  customs  of 
the  great  world  outside  of  their  own  moun- 
tains, for  which  the  English  held  them  in  such 
derision,  harmed  no  one  so  greatly  as  it  harmed 

themselves.       Had    they   known    the    outside 

232 


Pretoria  Square  Occupied  by  the  Britisli. 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

world,  had  they  been  able  to  overcome  their 
distrust  of  the  foreigner,  had  they  understood 
in  what  way  to  make  use  of  him,  how  to 
manipulate  the  press  of  the  world  to  tell  the 
truth  in  their  behalf  as  cleverly  as  the  English 
had  used  it  to  misrepresent  them,  had  they 
known  how  to  make  capital  of  the  sympathies 
of  the  French,  the  Americans,  and  the  Ger- 
mans and  to  turn  it  to  their  own  account,  had 
they  known  which  men  to  send  abroad  to  tell 
the  facts,  to  plead  and  to  explain,  had  they 
known  which  foreign  adventurer  was  the  one 
to  follow  implicitly  on  the  battle-field  and 
which  to  '^vootsak"  to  the  border,  had  they 
been  men  of  the  world  instead  of  farmers  in 
total  ignorance  of  it,  they  might  have  brought 
about  intervention,  or  an  honorable  peace. 
The  very  unworldliness  of  the  Boer  at  which 
the  Englishman  sneers,  did  much,  I  believe,  to 
save  Great  Britain  from  greater  humiliations, 
from  more  frequent  **  reverses "  and  more 
costly  defeats. 

As  our  train  drew  out  of  Pretoria  we  had 
no  certain  knowledge  that  the  Boer  Govern- 
ment had  not  destroyed  the  railroad  track 
between  the  old  and  the  new  capital  which  lay 

233 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

between  us  and  the  Portuguese  border.  The 
guard  could  not  say  how  soon  we  might  not 
be  halted  at  a  broken  bridge  and  brought 
back  to  find  the  English  occupying  the  hills 
around  Pretoria.  Even  as  we  waited  at 
the  station  many  hundreds  of  mounted  men 
rode  down  these  hills  into  Sunnyside,  and  at 
first  no  one  could  describe  them  as  either 
Boers  or  Britons.  The  passengers  were  flushed 
and  anxiously  excited,  and  some  of  them  so 
terrified  that  from  the  windows  they  begged 
the  guards  to  speed  them  on  their  way.  Gen- 
eral Botha  had  just  departed  in  a  special  train 
for  Irene,  ten  miles  distant,  where  the  English 
were  supposed  to  be  advancing  in  force.  In 
front  of  his  car  he  pushed  open  trucks  loaded 
with  field  artillery.  Over  at  the  artillery  bar- 
racks the  guns  that  still  remained  were  being 
*'  snaffled "  and  '*  hamstrung,"  and  those  can- 
non captured  from  the  British  were  awaiting 
to  receive  their  former  masters  in  a  condition 
of  utter  ruin.  The  wildest  rumors  swept  up 
and  down  the  length  of  the  long  platform,  stir- 
ring and  terrifying  the  refugees  into  greater 
and  sharper  panic,  children  and  women  wept 

and   embraced,    and    cried    to   the    men   they 

234 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF    PRETORIA 

were  leaving  behind  :  **  God  keep  you  well." 
Wounded  burghers  pushed  their  way  through 
the  sweating,  struggling  mass,  guarding  their 
bandaged  limbs  ;  Kaffirs  bearing  bundles  and 
boxes  shouted  and  snorted  at  others  to  clear 
the  way  ;  and  volunteers  with  bandoleers  and 
rifles  were  fighting  for  hanging  room  on  the 
car  platforms,  from  where  they  would  be  able 
to  drop  to  the  ground  at  the  station  nearest 
the  fighting-line.  From  both  the  Johannes- 
burg side  and  the  Irene  road  we  could  hear 
the  reports  of  the  Boer  cannon. 

I  had  entered  Pretoria  in  the  days  of  her 
successes,  and  I  was  deserting  her  at  the  mo- 
ment of  her  fall.  I  do  not  know  when  I  had 
left  a  place  with  as  heavy  a  heart,  and  as  the 
train  at  last  pulled  free  of  the  town  and  ran 
parallel  to  the  Middleburg  highway  each 
mounted  Boer  it  passed  seemed,  as  he  waved 
his  sombrero,  to  beckon  us  back  again.  The 
great  veldt,  throbbing  in  the  heat  of  the  sun 
and  flashing  with  brilliant  yellow  lights  and 
purple  shadows,  seemed  to  reproach  us.  The 
hot,  barren  kopjes  with  their  stunted  cacti,  the 
splashing  water-falls  and  the  twisting  white 
river  that  raced  the  train,  all  filled  me  with  re- 

235 


WITH   BOTH   ARMIES 

gret.  They  had  never  looked  more  beautiful 
or  more  to  be  desired,  or  more  as  the  country- 
men would  choose  to  call  home.  The  sight 
of  the  men  to  whom  it  really  was  home, 
who  were  fighting  for  it,  and  w^ho  were  to 
continue  to  fight  for  it,  stirred  me  with  pride 
in  them.  I  saw  them  for  the  last  time  even 
as  I  was  steaming  aw^ay  from  them  to  an- 
other continent,  to  other  interests  and  older 
friends.  They  were  jogging  patiently  through 
the  high  grass  on  our  right  and  spread- 
ing out  fanwise  over  the  red  kopjes  that 
lay  between  them  and  Irene,  where  the  sultry 
air  was  shaken  with  the  heavy  vibrations  of 
hot -throated  guns.  They  trotted  forward 
alone  or  in  pairs,  each  an  independent  fighting- 
man,  with  his  rifle  and  blanket  swung  across 
his  shoulders,  with  his  canvas  water-bottle, 
rusty  coffee-pot  and  bundle  of  green  fodder 
dangling  from  his  saddle.  I  knew  as  the  train 
carried  us  away  from  the  sight  of  them  that  no 
soldier  in  pipe-clay,  gauntlets,  and  gold  lace 
would  ever  again  mean  to  me  what  these 
burghers  meant,  these  long-bearded,  strong- 
eyed  Boers  with  their  drooping  cavalier's  hats, 

their  bristling  bands  of  cartridges,  their  upright 

236 


-f. 


THE   LAST    DAYS   OF   PRETORIA 

seat  in  the  saddle,  and  with  the  rifle  rising 
above  them  like  the  lance  of  the  crusader. 
They  are  the  last  of  the  crusaders.  They  rode 
out  to  fight  for  a  cause  as  old  as  the  days  of 
Pharaoh  and  the  children  of  Israel,  against  an 
enemy  ten  times  as  mighty  as  was  Washing- 
ton's in  his  war  for  independence.  As  I  see  it 
it  has  been  a  Holy  War,  this  war  of  the 
burgher  crusader,  and  his  motives  are  as  fine 
as  any  that  ever  called  *'  a  minute  man  "  from 
his  farm,  or  sent  a  knight  of  the  Cross  to  die 
for  it  in  Palestine.  Still,  in  spite  of  his  cause 
the  Boer  is  losing  and  in  time  his  end  may 
come,  and  he  may  fall.  But  when  he  falls  he 
will  not  fall  alone  ;  with  him  will  end  a  great 
principle — the  principle  for  which  our  fore- 
fathers fought — the  right  of  self-government, 
the  principle  of  independence. 


THE    END 


237 


A  List  of  Books  by 
Richard  Harding  Davis 

The  Cuban  and  Porto  Rican  Campaigns 
The  King's  Jackal  Gallegher,  and  Other  Stories 

Soldiers  of  Fortune       Cinderella,  and  Other  Stories 

Stories  for  Boys 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS,  PUBLISHERS 

*^  Mr.  Davis  has  vigorous  ideals — he  is  in  love 
with  strength  and  cleanness,  with  *  grit '  and  re- 
source, with  heroism  and  courage,  in  men;  with 
beauty  and  frankness,  with  freshness  and  youth,  in 
women ;  and,  liking  these  qualities,  he  also  likes 
writing  about  them.  Hence,  to  those  who  are  of 
Mr.  Davis's  mind  (as  I  am  for  one),  Mr.  Davis's 
hooks  are  always  welcome." — The  Academy. 

THE  CUBAN  AND  PORTO  RICAN 
CAMPAIGNS.  With  many  illus- 
trations from  photographs  and  draw- 
ings.   Crown  8vo,  $1.?0, 

Mr.  Davis's  articles  in  Scrihner's  Maga{ini,  which  have 
given  a  virtually  continuous  picture  of  the  war  and  have  at- 
tracted a  great  deal  of  attention,  form  the  basis  for  a  history 
of  the  conflict  which  Mr.  Davis  has  had  in  preparation  from 
the  beginning.  All  the  vivid  and  striking  passages  are  re- 
tained; but  in  addition  the  book  has  not  only  the  value  of 
a  skillful  war  correspondent's  momentary  impressions,  but 
of  a  carefully  considered  summing-up  by  an  especially  com- 
petent, serious  student  of  the  war. 


THE  ICING'S  JACKAL.  With  illus- 
trations and  a  cover-design  by 
C.  D.  Gibson.  Twenty-fifth  Thou- 
sand,   12mo,  ^1.00. 

"  Mr.  Davis  has  travelled  long  distances  and  has  seen 
many  strange  peoples,  and  it  is  therefore  scarcely  fair  to 
challenge  the  fidelity  of  his  characters  to  life,  especially  in 
the  present  instance,  where  we  are  introduced  into  Tangier, 
and  to  a  circle  which  includes  such  a  variety  of  personages 
as  an  exiled  King  of  Messina,  a  disgraced  German  officer,  a 
retired  croupier,  a  'fallen  angel,'  one  Prince  Kalonay,  'a 
fellow  of  the  very  best  blood  in  Europe  and  with  the  very 
worst  morals  * ;  an  American  correspondent  of  immense 
daring,  courage,  and  chivalry ;  a  brilliant  woman  of  easy 
virtue,  and  a  young  California  girl  with  a  great  fortune,  an 
ardent  admiration  for  brave  men,  a  devotion  for  the  Roman 
Catholic  Chui  ch,  and  an  ingenuous  character.  From  such 
heterogeneous  material,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  sharp  con- 
trasts and  surprising  complications  might  result.  .  .  . 
If  we  were  asked  to  suggest  a  story  which  should  keep  one 
for  a  couple  of  hours  or  more  in  a  glow  of  pleasurable 
anticipation,  by  its  demands  upon  our  sentiment,  we  could 
hardly  do  better  than  to  name  'The  King's  Jackal.'  " 

— Philadelphia  Bulletin. 

SOLDIERS  OF  FORTUNE.  With  illus- 
trations and  a  cover-design  by  C.  D. 
Gibson.  Fifty-eighth  Thousand. 
Uniform  with  "The  King's  Jackal." 
12mo,  $1.?0. 

"Mr.  Davis  has  produced  a  rousing:  tale  of  adventure, 
with  several  fine  fellows  in  it,  and  one  woman  whom  we 


are  glad  to  know,  and  who  has  gone  straight  to  our  hearts 
and  made  there  for  herself  a  corner  that  we  will  keep 
warm,  and  to  which  we  will  turn  with  pleasure  time  and 
again  to  love  her  for  all  her  fine  traits — most  of  all,  per- 
haps, for  her  genius  for  camaraderie,  which  found  so  grace- 
ful a  climax  in  the  kiss  she  imprinted  on  the  forehead  of 
the  young  Englishman  who  had  been  murdered  by  his  own 
treacherous  troopers.  .  .  .  It  is  not  necessary  to 
commend  this  story.  It  has  won  its  way  already.  But  to 
those  who  have  not  yet  read  it,  we  can  say,  '  Do  so  at  once.'  " 

—  The  Critic. 

GALLEGHER,  AND  OTHER  STORIES. 
With  cover-design  by  A.  B.  Frost. 
Fortieth  Thousand.  Uniform  with 
"The  King's  Jackal"  and  "Soldiers 
of  Fortune."  12mo,  paper,  JO  cents; 
cloth,  ^1.00. 

GALLEGHER  THE  TRAILER  FOR  ROOM  NO.  8 

A  Walk  up  the  Avenue  The  Cynical  Miss  Cather- 
My  Disreputable   Friend,         waight 

Mr.  Raegen  Van  Bibber  and  the  Swan 

The  Other  Woman  Boats 

There  Were   Ninety  and     Van  Bibber's  Burglar 

Nine  Van  Bibber  as  Best  Man 

"  Mr.  Davis's  stories  are  also  of  the  people  and  for  the 
people;  and  their  swift,  concentrated  style  makes  them 
grateful  reading.  Mr.  Davis's  Fifth  Avenue  sketches  are  as 
unaffected  as  those  of  Cherry  Street;  and  while  finding 
them  all  among  the  best  stories  of  the  year,  we  confess  to 
a  partiality  for  those  which  immortalize  Van  Bibber  the 
dandy,  who  goes  rowing  in  Central  Park  with  children 
from  the  tenement-houses,  and  lends  his  aid  to  elopements 
and  to  deserving  burglars;  never,  even  under  the  most 
trying  circumstances,  losing  the  air  of  wearing  an  orchid  in 
his  buttonhole." — New  York  Evening  Post. 


CINDERELLA,  AND  OTHER  STO- 
RIES. With  cover-design  by  A.  B. 
Wenzell.  Thirteenth  Thousand. 
Uniform  with  "The  Kings  Jackal." 
12mo,  $1.00. 

Cinderella  An  Assisted  Emigrant 

Miss  Delamar's  Understudy    The  Reporter  Who  Made 
The  Editor's  Story  Himself  King 

"Mr.  Davis's  aptitude  for  work  of  this  kind  is  too 
well  known  to  need  commendation.  There  is  a  freshness 
and  brightness  about  this  volume  which  is  very  attractive, 
for  he  is  one  of  the  writers  peculiar  to  the  period,  to  whom 
dullness  would  seem  to  be  impossible.  There  are  five 
sketches  in  the  book,  and  each  is  so  good  in  its  way  that  it 
is  not  easy  to  say  which  is  the  best." — Public  Opinion. 

STORIES  FOR  BOYS.  Illustrated, 
12mo,   $1.00. 

"  It  is  a  fact,  not  generally  known,  but  nevertheless  a  fact, 
that  Richard  Harding  Davis  began  his  career  as  a  weaver  of 
stories  for  boys,  his  first  work  appearing  in  St.  Nicholas. 
.  .  .  These  capital  sketches  have  genuine  interest  of 
plot,  a  hearty,  breezy  spirit  of  youth  and  adventuresomeness 
which  will  captivate  the  special  audience  they  are  addressed 
to  and  will  also  charm  older  people." — Hartford  Courant. 

"  All  the  stories  have  a  verve  and  fire  and  movement 
which  is  just  what  boys  like." — Boston  Transcript. 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

153-157  FIFTH  AVENUE  NEW  YORK 


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